Here's why the Golden Gate Bridge sings in San Francisco now

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San Francisco’s iconic Golden Gate Bridge is “singing” and its neighbors aren’t quite sure if they love it or hate it.

Residents in the Bay Area said they can hear sounds from the 83-year-old bridge as far as three miles away.

The “musical tones” coming from the bridge are a result of a project “designed to make the bridge more aerodynamic under high wind conditions and is necessary to ensure the safety and structural integrity of the bridge for generations to come,” a Golden Gate Bridge district spokesperson told CNN.

Shirin Kermani and her family have been frequent visitors of the bridge for the past five years under several different weather conditions, but she’s never heard a sound like this before.

“Even when we were walking up toward the bridge from around Battery East and Lincoln Boulevard, we heard something very sad,” Kermani said. “Like a loud didgeridoo or meditation song being played all around us.”

Though others have said the sound is annoying, Kermani said she found them peaceful.

Part of the project includes replacing handrails on the west sidewalk with new, thinner vertical slats so that more air can flow through, according to the Bridge District spokesperson.

“We knew going into the handrail replacement that the Bridge would sing during exceptionally high winds from the west, as we saw yesterday,” he said.

Ray Ryan, who has lived in San Francisco since the 1990s, told CNN he first noticed the “haunting yet kind of beautiful” noise Friday afternoon while his friends had heard it last weekend.

Ryan said his family argued over what the tones are comparable to and have boiled it down to a sound similar to a train or an organ.