What do you suppose this boom was today?

In My Humble Opinion (IMHO)
#1

At 5:30 pm today, there was a boom heard in my neighbourhood and surrounding neighbourhoods, and nobody knows what it was. It wasn’t an explosion, it wasn’t thunder, it (probably) wasn’t a sonic boom (or someone would have known there was a jet overhead at that time), no companies have come forward and said that they were doing something at that time that caused a loud boom. Apparently there was also a loud boom in a town two hours away at the same time.

What do you suppose could have caused these mystery booms?

#2

My WAGs:

1 Meteor.
2 High flying military jet accidentally breaking the sound barrier.
3Thunder (you said not likely, but maybe a rare bolt out of the blue kinda thing).
4 Transformer explosion (they don’t always leave neighborhoods in the dark).

History channel guess:
1 Aliens.

#3

Some idiot threw an old propane tank or some other large, pressurized canister in their backyard fire. Doesn’t explain the town two hours away, though. There isn’t much that can happen on the ground that would be audible such a large distance in each direction, which makes me think it was a sonic boom. Unless the other town’s boom was a separate incident.

#4

Obviously, you were being attacked by UFO’s. Run now, before it’s too late!!! :slight_smile:

Or else it was a sonic boom.
(yes, “someone” knew there was a jet overhead—but they were sitting in the control tower of an air force base 200 miles away, and they just didn’t happen to have your cell phone number to notify you.)

A sonic boom is the loudest sound I’ve ever heard. It’s not just aural…you feel it physically, shaking your whole body.Unless the plane is at a very high altitude, it which case it’s a little less jarring , but it’s still VERY VERY LOUD.

#5

I’ve heard transformers blow up like that at least a dozen times in my life.

#6

Has anybody seen Marvin the Martian around? He does enjoy Earth-shattering kabooms and the like.

#7

IIRC, the rule re creating sonic booms (USAF and FAA): if you’'re high enough that the sound doesn’t reach the ground, go wild.
Also, IIRC, high enough is approx 40,000 ft MSL

It would be a very low-flying military jet, and few civilian planes can reach mach 1 (there are now MiG 15 (and maybe 17’s) in civilian hands in the US (unless the Feds took them away - the FAA got nervous about the quality of ancient planes being sold by Russia for quick cash.)

I grew up in Dayton, home of WPAFB - sonic booms were common - until the Air Force got tired of buying people new windows.

#8
  1. It was the crack of dawn.
  2. Some farmer fed his chickens lay-or-bust feed–and one was a rooster. :smiley:
#9

Charlie Sheen on a road trip. “Success! Winning! BOOM!”

#10

The story was on the six and 11 o’clock news, since 911 had been inundated with calls regarding the boom. I’d like to think that someone who knew if there was a jet flying overhead at that time would have informed somebody at some point. But yeah, who knows - the military does as they do.

Speculation this morning is that it was a frost quake - I didn’t even know we got those here!

#11

Icequake. With the weather we’ve been having, it was probably an icequake.

#12

Dunno. Sometimes we’ll have loud booms that sound like a truck fell out of a flying plane. I’ll run to Facebook, and there won’t be any posts about it.

As opposed to the time we had a 5.5 earthquake (in Oklahoma) and about 30 people posted at once.

#13

My first thought was dynamite at a quarry but someone would know for sure about that. There’s a quarry about 4 miles from us and we hear booms from there fairly often.

Didn’t know there were such things as icequakes. Cool!

#14

Meth lab explosion? Happened near my hometown once.

#15

One of the loudest booms I’ve heard here happened when the gas pipe leading to a newly constructed home exploded. Fortunately, no one was inside the home. I hope that was not the cause of your noise.

#16

Trouble at the mill. One on’t cross beams gone owt askew on treadle.

#17

A loud boom heard throughout your neighborhood and surrounding neighborhoods AND heard simultaneously 2 miles away? Is there any evidence of destruction (broken windows, crater) or a plume of smoke?

2 possibilities come to my mind; A) a sonic boom or 2) some sort of exploding meteorite* similar to that recently happened in Russia.

*or meteoroid or whatever the heck it’s called.

#18

For a couple of years our area had similar mystery booms about once a month. At first it was a single boom but over time it would become 2 or 3 over the period of an hour and then none until about a month later. The booms could be heard at different locations miles from each other. After a couple of years of people speculating with a lot of the same guesses I’ve seen in this thread the local sheriff finally tracked it down.

In a rural area in the midst of a lot of suburbs someone decided it was fun to shoot a barrel with Tannerite in it. After awhile their friends started doing it too and what would happen was one family would shoot their barrel, then their friends a couple miles away would hear it and shoot one themselves.

It’s completely legal and honestly isn’t really annoying or anything. It’s nice to know what’s going on though. Now that I think of it I haven’t heard any lately. Maybe it stopped being fun when everyone found out what it was and it wasn’t a big mystery anymore.

#19

[ul]
[li]Are there any local seismographs that can be checked? California has regular skyquakes that register on seismographs. Apparently the US military is the cause of those, although the military never confirms nor denies. When the Shuttle was operating the seismographs regularly recorded its re-entry at Edwards AFB.[/li][li]A meteor.[/li][/ul]

#20

We had a boom mystery in Portland a few years ago. Someone even set up a web site about it (warning: sounds effects [turn down your speakers if you’re at work] and lots of annoying flashy GIFs). Supposedly it was a fairly large pipe bomb.

And I honestly can’t tell if that site is serious or a joke. Keep Portland Weird, I guess.