Mysterious Explosion

4/25/2014 - Champaign, IL

Friday morning around 1am I heard a loud explosion in the distance as I was trying to fall asleep. A few seconds after I heard the sound our house shook, car alarms throughout the neighborhood went off, and dogs began barking. I jumped out of bed, looked out the window and saw nothing. It definitely wasn't thunder. We really don't get earthquakes here, and there arent' reports of one. There's an airport nearby, but the planes never fly over our house, no reports of planes flying low or exploding. No reports of any explosions at all actually.

This weirded me out since I've been reading reports of unexplained explosions.
Any thoughts on what it could be?
Any experiences of your own?

We experienced a similar incident about 10 years ago when a chemical factory more than 50 miles away exploded.

Similar experiences could be a sonic boom from an aircraft, lightning hitting something like a transformer, fracking, earthquake.

a reply to: Pajamathief

ye sonic boom craft, several booms but you only hear one as it goes past cause its goin so fast...

a reply to: theabsolutetruth

I've seen lighting hit a transformer before. Those explosions are the best. It happened about 11 years ago. We saw a huge green ball explosion happen just before the lightning appeared to be striking it. It wasn't as bright as it looked though. Neon green but still a bit dim.

A sonicboom is a very unique sound.
This sounded like a very large explosion in the distance and seemed to originate from the sky.