Explosions in Utah?

I don't know if this has been posted already in another thread, but Coast continues to have good stuff on the site. They have some pics that someone sent in of very large explosions around Wellington, Utah.

Any ideas on what this could be from?

www.coasttocoastam.com...

Is it possible that it could have just been a bad grass fire? This is the height of fire season. He mentioned that there were other "explosions", but what does he base that on? Did he hear anything, or just see smoke?

Wellington is about 90 miles, near as I can figure, from Thiokol, the world's largest builder of solid propellant rocket motors.

I figure if a couple hundred pounds of cast ammonium perchlorate were ignited, you could see the plume from a hundred miles way -- easily.

But my guess is like my colleague's: a grass fire.

the cloud looks to dense and shaped to be anything but an explosion,a fire would have a less compact and wider drift,only my opinion.i have seen smoke plumes from explosions before and i base my opinion on my own experiences.

I've seen wildfires from a distance before, and when they're first starting out they can be pretty compact. It's only when they've been burning for a while do they start to drift & lose their shape.

Originally posted by Off_The_Street
Wellington is about 90 miles, near as I can figure, from Thiokol, the world's largest builder of solid propellant rocket motors.

I figure if a couple hundred pounds of cast ammonium perchlorate were ignited, you could see the plume from a hundred miles way -- easily.

But my guess is like my colleague's: a grass fire.

When I saw the landscape I also thought it might be Thiokol doing a shuttle booster test. But Wellington is in Carbon County which is in Central Eastern Utah about 175 miles and several mountain ranges from the Thiokol plant in Northern Utah.

Wierd though - the only thing in Carbon County is mines and a few ranchers....and alot of BLM land. I remember taking road trips to see the Fremont indian pictoglyphs and look for arrow heads.

There does not seem to be that much to burn out there. It also looks closer than 90 miles.

The plume structure: the distribution is fairly compact, possibly due to lower wind speed. The top of the smoke plume is white, which indicates the presence of water vapor, the lower plume which is darker, is the soot layer, which is particle heavy. That's why it is much lower than the plume with the water vapor. This indicates larger particles that would originate from dry brush and grass burning quickly, rather than structures or rocket exhaust. Lighter smoke appears at the ground plume closest to the camera indicating the presense of water vapor again. This may be due to the presence of firefighters.

This could be a grass fire that was initially being fought and got out of control through wind spreading. An explosion would have a smoke plume of mixed soot and water vapor much like the lower parts of the plume without the white parts, soot would be more evenly scattered due to explosive particulation.

Hope that helps!

Regarding everyone's questions, I actually clicked on the above link and here is the original report:

On our way back home from a family drive on 8/29/04 my wife and I noticed a peculiar mushroom cloud just east of our home in Wellington, UT. We ran into the house and brought our both of our digital cameras and started snapping pictures. Within 2 hours there were three different �explosions� resulting in mushroom clouds.

We emailed a local news station; they looked into the pictures but to no avail. There were truck drivers parked at the gas station just down from our home, the drivers did not dare drive the road for fear of whatever was happening out there. Pretty scary afternoon, especially during this time of heightened alert in our nation.

So this occurred nearly a month ago- anyone in Utah have any news stories from 8/29 about large grass fires? military tests? There must be fire departments in Utah that were called about the event on 8/29/04- does anyone have any connections?

Of course the most rational explanation is that I didn't see it on ATSNN, therefore it is a hoax.

MK