If you’ve ever heard a loud, distant booming noise with no obvious explanation like a thunderstorm or a car backfiring, then you might have experienced a skyquake.
Skyquakes have been reported around the world and locals have different names for them in different regions. Near Seneca Lake in New York State, they’re known as ‘Seneca guns’; in Belgium they’re called ‘mistpoeffers’; and the Japanese refer to them as ‘uminari’, which literally means ‘cries from the sea.’