A ghostly, ear-rattling thrum emanating over the Golden Gate Bridge and throughout San Francisco’s Presidio neighborhood appears to be the result of high winds gusting through new slats on the bridge handrails.
Officials at San Francisco’s 311 call center acknowledged the issue on Twitter after it snowballed Friday night, with multiple users posting recordings of the deafening noise.
— San Francisco Chronicle
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, a spokesman for the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District said that the sounds "were a known and inevitable part of a wind retrofit project" that the bridge had underwent.
"As part of that larger project, engineers replaced the thick, chunky slats on the western handrail with thinner slats, designed to help make the orange span more aerodynamic. Those slats allow more air to flow on the bridge, enabling the structure to withstand gusts of up to 100 mph, as opposed to 68 mph with the old rails," writes the Chronicle.
Check out a video of the noise below:
2 Comments
when I heard it, I looked up thinking it was the sound of high bi pass turbo fan engines on a 777
Very interesting!
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