Fire in the Sky
The USGS has since speculated that the shake felt by residents in southern counties for an estimated 15 seconds was from a sonic boom. The effect would be a 'thunder-like noise a person on the ground hears when an aircraft or other type of aerospace vehicle files overhead faster than the speed of sound or supersonic,' according to NASA.
An officer with the Sea Isle City Police Department said they had not confirmed it having been a sonic boom as reported by local news reports but told MailOnline it was a 'non-event.' The shake was reported in several counties including Atlantic, Cape May, Ocean, Salem and Camden.
'I'm in [Little Egg Harbor] and my basement door shook violently for 15 sec or so long enough to creep me out. Sounded like someone was trying to get out,' a resident wrote on the Facebook page for Jersey Shore Hurricane News.
'My dog whelped two times before it happened I had thought he hurt himself. Then the huge noise boomed and my house shook slightly. It felt like it came from above,' a claimed Northfield resident wrote.
Last weekend Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst had advised residents of scheduled military training that could cause booms and ground tremors.
Base spokesman Pascual Flores told NBC News that wasn't the case for today. 'There currently is no training of any type that would have resulted in today's incident,' he said.
Eager to suggest other causes for the tremor, residents on Facebook pitched ideas consisting of: Fracking, 'Romney dropped his BINDERS,' Governor Chris Christie jogging, and 'Snookie fell off a barstool.'
Comment:
So if there was no earthquake, what caused the sonic boom? Elsewhere on the Big Blue Marble there have been almost daily reports of loud booms as well as 'earthquakes' and meteorite explosions:
Thousands report loud boom and unusual sounds in Northeastern US: USGS classifies it as earthquake, but was it really an overhead meteor explosion?
Meteor explodes above Devon, England, blast wave blows open police station doors, tremors felt across wide area
Fragmentation and Sonics! Northern California Fireball Meteor +19'42 PDT 17OCT2012 - Unrelated to the Orionids
Slow-moving blue-orange fireball reported over Lincolnshire, England
Meteor with a long gold tail blazes across Alberta, Canada, 15 October 2012
Large bright fireball with orange-green tail breaks apart over Queensland, Australia, 29 August 2012
Something wicked this way comes? Read our SOTT Focus: Meteorite Impacts Earth in Minden, Louisiana - Media and Government Cover It Up
Reader Comments
The booms could be caused by isostatic rebound. Such a vertical motion might not have any reversal movements, and it wouldn't necessarily set off the seismic needles. We would still need a driving force, like mountaintop removal, massive extraction, magnetic field collapses, etc.
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Check out this recent news about a large killer earthquake in Spain last year.
Scientists now say the earthquake may have been caused by groundwater extraction lowering the water in an aquifer.
So, what might the current drought in the USA during to the Mississippi aquifer under the New Madrid... and aquifers elsewhere ?
" Groundwater extraction from agriculture and industry that lowered a nearby aquifer helped spark a quake in Spain last year that killed nine people, according to a study published Sunday in Nature Geoscience. "
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"human induced"
" The shallow-depth quake at 1.2 to 2.5 miles in one of the highest seismic risk areas in Spain was "human-induced" by groundwater changes, the study said. "
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or meteor...