Thursday afternoon the staff from the University of Wisconsin-Madison near Lake Mendota felt a shake and heard a noise like a boom which was triggered by an ice quake.

According to the University of Wisconsin-Madison geologists, even though they didn’t feel the quake on West Dayton Street the tremor was recorded around 12:50 p.m. and lasted two or three seconds. At the time quake the temperature in Madison was of 16 degrees.

Patrick Brenzel, from the department of sociology situated at the eighth-floor, 1180 Observatory Drive, said: “It actually sounded like a bus drove into the building. The whole building shook.”

The ice quakes are triggered by large shifts in lake ice when temperature changes dramatically thus making a loud noise when it cracks, according to Cliff Thurber, a professor of geophysics.

He said: "This one was big enough and close enough to shake some people up,” Madison.com reports.

Thurber said that after this event, is possible to see a ridge on Lake Mendota.  

He said: "Ice has strange behavior. Ice expands and contracts. Sometimes it breaks in that process, and this time it broke big time."

Several people called police when they’ve heard the noise. They’ve even received a call from the Red Gym on Langdon Street, where Linda Scheid is in charge with campus-area housing from an office located at the ground floor.

She said: "You mean the ice quake that shook my chair? It was alarming."

She said that people coming out of the offices were looking at each other almost like saying “Do you think it was a bomb?”

In January 2005 it was reported another ice quake on Lake Mendota. People thought that what they’ve heard was an explosion.