A “loud rumble” heard and felt by residents along the Atlantic Coast on Friday afternoon was caused by an aircraft flying supersonic in a training exercise, according to a Maryland naval station.
In social media posts, residents in southern Delaware, along the Jersey Shore and in other parts of New Jersey said their homes and places of work shook for about 10 seconds around 2 p.m.
“I had to go open the window to see what the hell was happening,” one Facebook commenter wrote.
Patrick Gordon, public affairs officer for Naval Air Station Patuxent River, said their aircraft flew a few miles off the coast through a path known as the “Atlantic test track” used by the Department of Defense. The aircraft went supersonic, Gordon said, breaking the sound barrier, which produced a loud sound similar to thunder. It’s referred to as a sonic boom.
At sea level, the speed of sound is about 750 miles per hour, according to the Air Force.
Gordon said their aircraft have to fly close to the shore so they can be tracked. Most aircraft that fly supersonic aren’t heard on people’s doorsteps, but certain atmospheric conditions are conducive to the boom traveling, Gordon said.
In the immediate aftermath of the rumble, residents took to social media to find out if they’d just experienced an earthquake. The U.S. Geological Survey, which tracks seismic activity across the nation, didn’t report earthquakes of any magnitude in the region Friday.
Alex Staarmann, a National Weather Service meteorologist, said there were no other weather phenomena in the area that would have caused the sound and the shaking.
Earthquake reported in 2021
In August 2021, scientists attributed a loud boom and shaking felt by hundreds of residents in New Castle County to an explosion at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, a U.S. Army facility in Maryland. Delaware Geological Survey scientists originally said they believed the noise and shaking was an earthquake as a 2.1-magnitude earthquake with an epicenter near Clarksville, Maryland, was reported earlier in the day. They later attributed the sound and shaking to the Army facility once reports surfaced about the explosion.
Contact Brandon Holveck at bholveck@delawareonline.com. Follow him on Twitter @holveck_brandon.
