I've not heard a great deal from neighbors here in Southeast yet, but
some over in the St. Anthony Park neighborhood in St. Paul on a
listserv have been reporting being able to hear the play-by-play over
the P.A. system very clearly from 2 miles away. I had no problem
hearing either, but I'm just six blocks away; I was a whole lot more
bothered by the number of helicopters, presumably belonging to the
television stations covering the first game in the stadium last night.
We get a whole lot of traffic reporting choppers covering downtown at
rush hour sometimes, but this was pretty ridiculous.
I wonder if we could restrict this sort of helicopter traffic, forcing
the news media into quiet blimps, perhaps.
A SAP person wondered if the stadium was breaking any noise
ordinances, like we could call the cops to tell them to turn it down
or go home, but somehow I think it must be legal, as we probably had
something similar from the old Memorial Stadium.
I thought perhaps a weather anomaly might be responsible for so much
noise heard so far away; we had rain in the area surrounding the
stadium, but not on the stadium, so that clouds might conceivably
formed a sort of sound conduit. Another SAP resident thought the
horseshoe shape of the stadium might have directed sound eastward to
them, sort of like a speaker housing, I guess. Maybe we could plant a
grove of sequoias behind the score board as a sound mitigation.
Go, Gophers, but more quietly please!