Mystery boom in Alabama

Mystery boom in Alabama

www.whnt.com

We have received hundreds of reports of a "loud boom" in Marshall, Madison, Lawrence, Limestone, Morgan, DeKalb, and Jackson counties. It happened about 11:10 Thursday night.
You may have felt something shake your house and rattle your windows. We could even feel it here at NewsChannel 19, in downtown Huntsville.

(visit the link for the full news article)

I bet this was another meteor. Maybe some video will surface.

www.whnt.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

They've got that huge NASA facility south of Huntsville. I bet they were testing a rocket for the new space vehicle. If something went wrong or even right NASA probably won't tell.

That is Redstone Arsenal. They developed the Saturn V rocket there. Whatever it was it was definitely loud. The website says it shook windows/was heard over a 7 county area.

Edited to correct rocket type

[edit on 22-2-2008 by macgyver]

I live right outside of Huntsville. I did hear the boom and my door rattled for a little over a second around 11:10 last night. Theres actually been a lot more "booms" going on than usual. Most of the time I can't hear them where I'm located, yet I've been hearing them like crazy for the past few days. Though this was the only one to rattle my doors.

My window was open, I heard a boom that sounded far away. Almost instantaneous I heard my door rattle. I didn't feel a vibration in the ground, only the door rattling.

I'm gonna keep my eyes on this, I was curious to what may of caused it.

[edit on 22-2-2008 by Blacklight420]

Has anyone considered an earthquake? I would hear strange thunder claps when there was no clouds in the sky and then a couple years ago wa had a swarm of earthquakes. They were small but 2.3mag to 4 mag can be felt and heard if you are in a quiet house. I checked usgs.gov for mag 1 quakes and up but there was nothing of note in the area yet. We ended up getting initial quake data from Lamont Dougherty instead of USGS.

Any localized seismic recorders down there?

I know we do have at least one fault line that runs through the city, though I don't know of any seismic records for the area. The boom didn't sound like thunder, more like an explosion.

Has anyone offered up any explanations in the area?

I would tend to be a little on the cautious side if no 'possible answers' were forthcoming.

Could be a forewarning to something seismic going on. Hope not.

here's a realtime map of siesmic activity in the U.S.A..if it were a seismic annomoly then you would see it hereearthquake.usgs.gov...

I live in Tuscaloosa which is about 2 hours away so I obviously didnt feel anything but there is the big NASA base near Huntsville. I bet it had something to do with them. Also it is rare but we have earthquakes around here. We had a minor one about 4 years ago that woke up the campus.

reply to post by KidOK

earthquakes are not so rare in your area. large earth quakes are rare there though. just look at the usgs site that i linked in my earlier post and you'll see a few there now..

Well, Redstone Arsenal is taking credit for the noise. Still not clear why this test was so loud. Other tests are only heard in Huntsville.

Link to article

Officials at Redstone Arsenal now confirm the sound was because of a rocket motor test at Test Area 4.

at 11:10pm? Shaking houses? I coulda sworn most noise ordinances end at either 10 or 11 pm... But of course I'd be a fool to think that would apply to the military...

Little More Explanation

Heres an article explaining it a little more and why it was felt over a large area.

I too heard a loud boom that shook the house and woke me from sleep and freaked my dogs out. and I live in New Mexico...

I asked a friend of mine if he had heard somthing too and he said no, but he said another friend asked him the same thing. My first thought was the missile that shot down the satilite.

That doesn't sound normal though, an old friend of mine lives in Huntsville and I think his dad worked at the Arsenal. Said they stood behind a huge glass wall and watched stuff get overstressed and blow up or burn out. Basically do stress tests on everything.

Are there injury reports from the arsenal? I called my friend but he did not answer (like the 15 other times I have called him in the past year).

No, there are no reports of any injuries do to this "boom".

When I lived in NE AR, I frequently heard booms at all times of the day. It turned out that the military was doing ordinance tests in the area. The sounds would reverberate through the ground to places that seemed too far away to be possible.

See any planes flying in the area lately?

TheBorg

Not sure about planes. I talked to someone that said they've been burning off jet fuel here recently. It doesn't seem like there was any damage, injuries, or anything of the sort because recovery teams down here were not activated.