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Mysterious Booms

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Lawrence Tilton on Dudley Corner Road is just as sure it wasn't an earthquake. He said he was going to his mailbox Thursday when the earth shook and he saw jets going overhead: "It was a sonic boom. Mystery solved." Sheila Gilbert on Johnson Flats Road, said the earth movement "shook my whole home; it rattled the whole trailer." Margaret LaRochelle, U.S. Route 2 Norridgewock near My Cousin's Place, said the shaking and thud scared her dogs and her daughter. Bob Poulin, at a mobile home park in Clinton near Galusha's store said his wind chimes started shaking and he turned on his scanner to see what was happening: "It was quite a shake." Most of the callers said they were glad to read in Friday's Sentinel that they were not alone in their experience. "I heard the noise and I thought it was an accident out front... I'm glad I wasn't the only one," said Victoria Bowring of Clinton. Katherine Waite, an American living in Munich, Germany, wrote in an e-mail that she read the Sentinel article and had an explanation. She said she belongs to an active Web forum that recently discussed "big boom noises." She said some of the members are engineers from the aerospace industry and they said that if military jets are scrambled, they break the sound barrier at a lower altitude than normal, which could cause a sonic boom. Attempts to reach a military official for a response were unsuccessful.

January 19, 2006 NBC - WPMI - MOBILE, AL

It wasn't an earthquake, but it felt like it to many of you. What sounded and felt like an intense explosion rocked much of the local area around 2:30 Thursday afternoon, shaking homes and businesses and shaking up a lot of residents. "I heard a shaking and a rattling," said Lana Cook, who experienced the boom in her home off Moffet Road. "It was like someone pounding with their fists." The boom created some scary moments for residents throughout much of the local area, who experienced what sounded and felt like an explosion. "This was hard, loud and continuous," Cook added.

Mobile County's Emergency Management Agency says crews were dispatched to check for any type of explosion or industrial accident. They say they're looking at the incident as most likely a sonic boom whose intensity was amplified by local weather conditions. Chris Norton was at work at a warehouse off Moffett Road when he felt the boom. "I kind of felt like the walls had expanded," Norton said. "You could feel the walls and doors sort of blow open. It was pretty intense." For the time being, the exact cause remains unknown. The National Earthquake Information Center in Colorado registered no unusual activity, and officials at Eglin Air Force Base say they had no high-speed flights that would have caused a sonic boom. No injuries or structural damage was reported after this afternoon's boom.

December 21, 2005 WRAL-TV - CAROLINA BEACH, N.C.

Carolina Beach authorities were investigating reports of three loud booms in the area Tuesday. Valita Quattlebaum, a public information officer for Carolina Beach, said that about 4:20 p.m., she heard a loud boom and felt the building she was in shake. Numerous other residents and professionals in the area also called police reporting the same.

Quattlebaum said that Tuesday afternoon she was unaware of what may have caused the booms, but officials were looking at causes ranging from a plane flying too low to the ground to an earthquake. "We are making phone calls to the local weather stations and to the National Weather Service, but we don’t have any confirmations," Quattlebaum said. The U.S. Geological Survey Earthquake Center said it had not record of an earthquake along the North Carolina coast and local police that there were no scheduled activities in the area that would have cause the booms or buildings to shake. Officials said no reports had been received of injuries or structural damage.

December 21, 2005 Star - Wilmington, N.C.

Mysterious booms lead to surge of speculation -- Tim McKinney knows for sure what caused the blasts - the Seneca Guns, he said. He’s heard the mysterious coastal rumblings a thousand times, but never with the intensity he did Tuesday while working on the set of One Tree Hill in downtown Wilmington."That’s the strongest I’ve ever felt it in my life," he said. Something certainly caused a series of thunderous booms about 4 p.m. that sent some hurrying to call 911 and others looking skyward for answers. Curtis Reeves, who lives near Belville, said he initially feared an explosion at the Military Ocean Terminal at Sunny Point, near Southport. "It felt like an earthquake," he said. "It shook every house in this neighborhood." But officials reported no problems at the ammunition depot or elsewhere. And with nearly a cloud in the sky, the booms weren’t weather related, said Ron Steve, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Wilmington. Steve said he spoke to the U.S. Geological Survey, which said there had been no seismic activity in the area.

The weather service radar did, however, pick up signs of "chaff" off the coast of New Hanover and Brunswick counties, he said. Chaff is like metal confetti that military fighters emit to trick radar-seeking missiles, he said. It’s possible that jets off the coast broke the sound barrier as part of a military exercise. The public relations office at Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station in Havelock was unable to confirm by press time if Marines were on exercises nearby. Some people reported seeing military planes and helicopters flying in the area after the booms. But McKinney said the sound came from the ground, blaming the mysterious booms that have been reported in the area for centuries. The name, "Seneca Guns," comes from a similar phenomenon in New York and Connecticut. Legend has it that the Seneca Indians are getting their revenge with the guns that Europeans used to displace them. More scientific explanations say the boom of the guns comes from earthquakes, material falling off the continental shelf, or pockets of hot air exploding like balloons.

December 16, 2005 WKRG-TV - Mississippi to Florida

A mysterious force shook buildings from Pascagoula, Mississippi to Chumuckla, Florida Friday morning, but no one News 5 talked to knows exactly what caused it. Sometime between 9:00 and 9:30 am, a thunderous sound rumbled through the Gulf Coast. Not everyone felt it, but those who did all described it in much the same way. Ruthstein Woods in Eight Mile said, "I was laying in the bed watching TV and all of a sudden, it was like big boom, like the ceiling or something was like falling. I jumped up and ran and looked, and I looked outside, but I didn't see anything. It was like real, real shaking and stuff." Donny George in Midtown felt it, too. "It was more like a sonic boom. I questioned whether or not the space shuttle had come back into the atmosphere, because I'm from Florida. And when the space shuttle comes in there, it makes a sonic boom, rattles the windows," said George. He added, "It rattled the building, rattled the windows. I thought somebody had hit our building." It shook Harvey Smith as well. "I just heard a loud boom, I thought maybe some kind of sonic boom or something like an airplane breaking the sound barrier, or...but it shook my house. I still don't know what it was."