Name: Hear that ghostly hum on the Golden Gate Bridge? It’s here to stay
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Hear that ghostly hum on the Golden Gate Bridge? It’s here to stay

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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.We can heat this in our house more than three miles away from the bridge. It's crazy making.— Ray Ryan (@rjrjr)Some of these audio recordings were taken in cars tooling across the bridge. In one posted Friday afternoon, a wall of sound seemed to envelope the vehicle, drowning out the engine and the low crackle of a car radio.While many people flinched at the noise and began spewing complaints on social media, others said it was beautiful. Paolo Cosulich-Schwartz, a spokesman for the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District, said the throbbing musical tones “were a known and inevitable part of a wind retrofit project” that the bridge had planned for years.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.We can heat this in our house more than three miles away from the bridge. It's crazy making.— Ray Ryan (@rjrjr)Work on that element of the project began last year, and it’s now three-quarters of the way done.More from Rachel Swan“The humming or singing is indeed part of the wind retrofit,” Cosulich-Schwartz said, noting that officials had heard these tones before, when they built scale models of the bridge and conducted creating typical weather conditions for the San Francisco Bay.So, wall-to-wall humming may be a feature of the Golden Gate Bridge going forward. But only at very specific times, when strong winds blow from the west — as they did Friday afternoon.Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Area’s largest water districts.Several San Francisco residents who endured the noise for three hours on Friday were dismayed that it may come back.“It sounded like an emergency response siren that may have been faulting out,” said Mark Krueger, an Inner Sunset resident who lives 3 or 4 miles from the bridge, but heard the wind singing anyway.After finding he couldn’t shut out the vibration with earbuds, Krueger began searching for noise-canceling headphones on Google. He checked Twitter and found that people in various neighborhoods — including the Mission and Presidio — were hearing the same sound.Krueger said he hopes that bridge district officials will find a way to suppress it in the future. He and his neighbors aren’t eager for more aural assault — especially if winds pick up from the west some time in the middle of the night.Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: Twitter:Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Area’s largest water districts.

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.We can heat this in our house more than three miles away from the bridge. It's crazy making.— Ray Ryan (@rjrjr)Some of these audio recordings were taken in cars tooling across the bridge. In one posted Friday...

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Rachel Swan covers transportation for The Chronicle. She joined the paper in 2015 and has also reported on politics in Oakland and San Francisco.  Previously, Rachel held staff positions at the SF Weekly and the East Bay Express, where she covered technology, law and the arts. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in rhetoric from the University of California, Berkeley.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/author/rachel-swan/

Rachel Swan

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Hear that ghostly hum on the Golden Gate Bridge? It’s here to stay

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