/diy/ - Do It Yourself

>>1545158
I have some desktop speakers (the $80 micca ones) w/ a $20 preamp hooked up to a laptop. The speakers+preamp are plugged into a wall socket near the interior, and the laptop is plugged into a socket near the window (through power strips).
Sometime this winter, when the speakers were on but the laptop closed, the speakers started buzzing. Once the laptop woke up, the buzzing stopped. Assuming this is a ground loop, which hadn't occurred before, my question is such:
Can cold weather create enough of a gradient that two previously equivalent sockets became mismatched, and therefore form a ground loop?