helicopter noise

I've mentioned helicopters several times over the years here. It kept me awake again last night too.

Read about the helicopter noise overhead last night...

I posted on Mastodon at the time, laying in bed, unable to sleep. I wasn't alone. (Keep reading that other local person's thread to see a more extensive flight route map than I posted.) I discovered this morning that somebody on Reddit also complained, with much the same map (now removed by moderators) that I provided earlier.

Thankfully, it's only occasionally that this trouble happens. For the record, I've never considered the medical helicopters that travel to/from the local hospital to be trouble. They make short work of their travel flight, unlike these surveillance runs that circle over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. Residents in some towns are raising complaints specifically about increased helicopter noise in recent years. This story has a choice quote that I agree with:

Meanwhile, households throughout the region live with a level of helicopter traffic that some residents describe as unprecedented and unbearable. The helicopters are impossible to ignore, they say, with their mind-numbing noise that rattles walls, floors, ceilings and nerves. Daniel said the frequent sound of whirring blades overhead makes her feel as if she is “living in a war zone” — or that she’s a character cowering in a jungle in the 1979 Vietnam War movie “Apocalypse Now.”
Washington Post, 2019 June 23

I never want to live near an airport, because of that recurring noise of air travel machines. Another article notes that "studies find helicopter noise is “much more variable and complex” than airplane noise."

I was also woken early at 5am by a rooster at a house near mine on the street behind my house. I usually don't hear it in winter, but the weather has been unusually warm lately. Overall, it was a night of very little sleep.