Steven Flisfeder, a warning preparedness meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, said Ottawa's temperature swings in the past 36 hours makes a frost quake possible across the city.Ī perfect recipe for the frost quake includes either recent rainfall or snow melt, warmer temperatures leading to liquid seeping into the ground, followed by a re-freeze, 'which certainly has occurred over the past couple of days in Ottawa,' he said.Īccording to historical data, temperatures across the city hit slightly above 0 C, and then dipped below –15 C in the past few days. (CBC News) The perfect recipe for a frost quake 'I actually felt my bed and my walls shake.'Ī meteorologist says frost quakes can happen with recent rainfall or snow melt, warmer temperatures leading to liquid seeping into the ground, followed by a re-freeze. Hewson says this is the first time she's heard about frost quakes, and she hasn't experienced anything like this in 16 years living there.

She ran to check on her daughter and searched her home for signs of damage, only to find everything and everyone safe and sound. 'It sounded almost like a cross between a small explosion and a giant thud of something hitting the foundation,' said Hewson, who also lives in Orléans. When Kirsten Hewson read Crocco's post, she breathed a sigh of relief after waking up panicked. Residents in the suburb of Barrhaven and in more rural areas also reported big bangs at their homes on social media over the past two days. Within the next few hours dozens of others described waking up and assuming either their partners or children had fallen out of bed, there was loud LRT construction, or someone broke into their homes. Still unsure, Crocco turned to her community Facebook page. 'I have lived in this house for 11 years and had never experienced before, so I was really worried.'Ĭrocco said her partner experienced something similar in the past, and he called it an 'ice quake.' They are also called frost quakes, or cryoseisms - seismic events caused by soaked underground soils cracking after rapid freezing. I actually felt my bed and my walls shake. She recalled fearing for her family's safety after waking up to a loud bang shortly after 1 a.m.

I didn't know what was happening,' said Emily Crocco, who lives in the city's east end suburb of Orléans. Loud bangs reportedly shook some beds and walls and led to sleepy-eyed searches throughout many homes - a collective experience, according to one meteorologist, that may be due to Mother Nature's perfect recipe for a phenomenon called a 'frost quake.' Across Ottawa, people were jolted awake at random intervals in the wee hours of Thursday morning.

Frost quake