Cryoseisms

Bahamian Snow Photo by Shannon!

There was a frost quake (that’s what a cryoseism is) on my birthday this year. These are rare natural phenomena (like I only turn 62 once in my lifetime?) that occur when moisture in the ground suddenly freezes and expands (think cracks in the sidewalk).The one that occurred on my birthday was in Wisconsin and left a fissure in some guy’s driveway that was an inch wide and 8 to 10 inches deep. I saw a photo of him measuring it online with a meter stick, but I think it would have been just as much fun to take photos of it with Lego men rescuing a fallen fellow from the crevasse. Anyway these frost quakes can be accompanied by booming noises and earthquake type rumbles even though they happen so close to the earth’s surface that are undetectable by actual earthquake seismological tools. The temperature swings have been abrupt enough this winter to cause these cryoseisms to occur in a bunch of places this winter in Canada, Missouri, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

So there was this frost quake on my birthday this year, but I missed it because I was in the Bahamas.