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Originally posted by Outrageo
Last night (3 March 09) about 9:30 pm I felt, along with thousands of other locals in Southern California, a very strange house-rattling that set us all on edge.
As a Physical Geog professor and long-time California resident I've experienced hundreds of earthquakes - and this wasn't one at all. None of the earthquake monitoring sites show anything of note, the local airports and regional military bases all say no operations, and nobody seems to know what caused it.
It was a quick rattling of a few seconds, rather noisy, causing the windows to rattle, doors to shake in their frames, and setting the dogs in the neighborhood off on a barking frenzy. There was no ground movement felt and the typical 'signs' we come to expect following an earthquake were altogether absent: chandeliers swinging, swimming pool water rocking back-and-forth, etc.
A quick check outside showed winds were calm - not a breath of air movement. Nothing was visible in the skies, though some reported that a sonic boom or recent asteroid flyby was the cause (doubtful). An asteroid passed recently, but was much too far to have an effect, especially such a localized one. NASA had no shuttle landing at nearby Edwards AFB, and no sonic 'boom' was heard in any case.
For a link to the story, please read the on-line newspaper article here.
What I find most fascinating is to read through some of the hundreds of witnesses that have written in seeking answers to the mystery. You can peruse through their comments directly below the article on the link above. the tone of befuddlement and exasperation the posters express is fascinating in itself. And this among die-hard earthquake-country residents!
So - what was it??? It was not an earthquake. The earthquake maps only show a tiny (very typical) trembler many miles away and twelve hours earlier - completely unrelated to this event.
I'm leaning toward a non-sonic type boom from an experimental or military aircraft far overhead - perhaps with a propulsion system or airframe that minimizes or mitigates the sonic part of the boom and we just felt the airwave disturbance traveling to the ground.
Any other theories out there??
[edit on 3/4/2009 by Outrageo]
Originally posted by ExPostFacto
I live in North Carolina. On the night of March 3-4th at about midnight we were in the midst of a snow storm. I was making a cup of hot chocolate at my sink and noticed the sky flashing RED. I went outside and there was a blinking red strobe out of the sky lighting the entire sky. My parents observed this same flashing, and we looked around for visible signs of maybe brake lights from a vehicle or something that would reflect off the snowfall. We found nothing, and no noise of aircraft. Odd...this repeated 2 more times lasting about 30 seconds within about an hour period. Being 3 hour difference than in Los Angeles this would put this event around the same time period as you. Later at about 1:30 am EST time a street light next to my house went dim, then sky flashed an emerald green color. There was no thunder and no visible signs of any lightening outside of the whole sky flashing color.
Originally posted by Shakesbeer
reply to post by violet
Missiles tend to leave long gnarly trails behind them to which are easy to see. Not to mention most of the missile tests in the area tend to come out of Edwards AFB.
Originally posted by cindymars
I had a migraine on last thursday and Friday and again yesterday.
I figured it was my hormonal problem. LOL