What Causes the Wind’s Whistle?
The whistle of the wind is caused very much like the whistle you make with your mouth or the noise made by the steam escaping through the spout of the kettle. You do not hear the wind whistle when you are out in it. You can hear it when you are in the house and the wind is blowing hard. When the wind blows against the house it tries to get in through all the crevices, under the cracks of the doors, down the chimneys, wherever it finds an opening. And whenever it starts through an opening that is too small for it, it makes a noise like the steam coming out of the spout of the kettle, provided the opening is of a certain shape.
Not all the noises made by the wind, however, are made in this way. The wind in blowing against things makes them vibrate like the strings of a piano or violin, and when things vibrate, as we have already seen, they produce sound waves, which, when they strike our ears, produce sounds of various kinds. The wind even on ordinary days makes the telegraph and telephone wires hum, as you can prove to yourself by placing your ear against a telegraph or telephone pole, and whenever the wind makes anything vibrate, a great many queer sounds are produced, which often frighten us more than they should.