SPOKANE VALLEY, Wash. – Early Wednesday many of you reached out to KREM 2 News wondering what an odd sound was that woke many up in Spokane Valley overnight.
Was it a UFO? Some kind of train? A whale, as some of us joked? Not quite. It turns out the sound was coming from road graders that were plowing snow and ice at the Valley Mall.
It looked and sounded like some kind of hokey setup shot to a movie about alien invaders or monsters.
Robin Clayton wrote to us “Sounded like a tuba playing on a loud speaker.”
Julie Queszada said “Maybe a yeti??”
Lynsey Betz kept it simple, “it’s aliens, people.”
The answer though, lies in the temperatures. We asked our own Briana Bermensolo to help us crack the case.
“It really all comes down to how sound moves through the air, through the molecules, and the temperature of the air,” she said. “Is the air hot, or is it cold?”
Bermensolo said that is why we were hearing the weird sound.
Here is another explanation. Normally, when it is not this cold out, sound waves will travel faster and bend upwards from hot air on the ground.
When it is really cold though, it is the opposite. The layer of cooler air is closer to the ground and warmer air is covering it from above. As the sound waves travel upwards, they are bent by the warm air and directed back towards the ground. The difference in temperature causes this.
So thus, sound seems to travel further on colder days and you could be hearing all kinds of sounds from a distance.
