CRUMPING NOISES MAY HAVE BEEN DISTANT EXPLOSIONS

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28421, 30 October 1957, Page 12

CRUMPING NOISES MAY HAVE BEEN DISTANT EXPLOSIONS

There was a possibility that a temperature inversion causing a downward reflection of sound from a series of explosions a long distance away could have been the cause of the mysterious, deep, crumping noises heard in Christchurch on Monday night and yesterday, said Mr C. S. L. Keay, a research physicist at the University of Canterbury. Meteorologists at the Harewood Weather Office confirmed that there was an inversion at 35.000 ft, although that would normally be too high for any sounds to be reflected back to the earth.

The explosions could have been several hundred miles away, a meteorologist said. It was impossible to say what direction they had come from.

“I haven’t heard the noises myself, so it is very difficult to say just what they might have been." Mr Keay said. “A reflection caused by a temperature inversion is just a vague possibility.

“It was certainly not the Russion satellite,” he added. The noises were heard by a number of persons—including two reporters of “The Press” —in and

around Christchurch on Monday night. They were described as “deep crumps that sounded like underground explosions.” The noises were heard again in the city and suburbs at lunchtime yesterday. Several Fendalton residents reported that the noises were loud enough to shake their houses. A Hoon Hay road resident said that the noises sounded like ’’bombing.” Two other reporters heard the noises at 1.30 p.m. Most of the reports described the noises as a series of three distinct thuds.

Inquiries at the North Canterbury Catchment Board, the Waimairi County Council, the Ministry of Works, State Hydro-elec-tric Department and the Army, Navy and Air Force district headquarters showed that no largescale blasting operations had been carried out in the north-west of Christchurch. Meteorologists said that there were thunderstorms in Otago and on the West Coast, but the nature o r the noises excluded- any possibility of their being caused by thunder. Mr J. W. Bcagley. director of the D.S.I.R. geophysical observatory, discounted a suggestion that an earthquake had caused the noises.

Earthquake noises did not travel very far through the earth, he said, and were unlikely to last for so long a time. There had been no reports of any shocks.