December 24, 2004

What would you call that noise?

I'm back at the lake after a couple days down in the big city.

While I was gone the temp here reached 60 degrees, and they had 1.5 inches of rain in a three hour period last night. As a result the ice and snow cover took a beating.

The ice has thinned out, and though the lake had been dropping, the rain runoff is raising it again. This is causing the ice a fair amount of stress.

It's cracking and groaning.

My favorite ice-sound is a science-fiction-phasor-gun sort of sound, as a crack suddenly splits across the surface. It's a cool sound, and I've been trying to come up with a word that describes it.

"Groaning" isn't right. It's a little reminiscent of "thunder", but that's not quite right either. I've been thinking something like "screaming", or "wailing".

Ideas?

Posted by jackhodgson at December 24, 2004 02:39 PM