Wellington's mysterious hum – noise police poised to swoop
Residents claiming to have heard the hum have council staff scratching collectively confused heads.
Wellington city council is poised to dispatch noise police to citizens complaining about the capital's hum.
Since Sunday morning, council officers have received at least 20 calls from people living in the Mt Victoria, Mt Cook and Newtown areas complaining of a low hum.
Council spokesman Clayton Anderson told NBR ONLINE he is at a loss to figure out exactly what the noise is or where it is coming from.
He says more calls came between 4am and 5am yesterday asking for council staff to check it out.
The noise has been likened to someone blowing across the mouth of a bottle.
Mr Anderson says the council has eliminated early morning construction activity but has not yet ruled out the infamous Wellington wind being the cause.
He lives in nearby Kilbirnie and says he has yet to hear the noise.
There have also been a handful of emails, some of which have offered theories about the hum, including a suggestion it may be from early morning bakery extractor fans, he says.
One Auckland woman wrote that she had heard the noise when visiting Wellington recently, but had also heard something similar in the super city.
NBR ONLINE’s efforts to hear the hum or to find people who have heard it continue.
Strangely, a similar unexplained low hum was reported in parts of Auckland and the North Shore in 2006, leading some people to think it was a desperate concentration of declining bee activity.
Blair Cunningham
Wed, 10 Oct 2012
Wed, 10 Oct 2012
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Wellington's mysterious hum – noise police poised to swoop
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