Mysterious Loud ‘Boom’ Heard across North Alabama – NASA Unsure of Cause
A loud boom was heard over much of north Alabama on November 14, 2017
Shortly after 1:40 p.m., a loud ‘boom’ was heard across North Alabama in Blount, Jefferson, Walker, Cullman, Talladega, Calhoun, Clay, Winston, Randolph, Tuscaloosa, and St. Clair counties.
It’s the sound everybody is talking about. So much so, Trey Cochran wrote a song about it:
Alabamians flocked to Twitter, with many reporting the event shook their homes.
Lincoln resident Dawn Stanton described it as “…a propane tank just exploding. I looked and I didn’t see nothin’ sailing through the air.”
The National Weather Service in Birmingham hypothesized the sound originated from an aircraft sonic boom or a meteorite from the Leonid shower.
NASA’s Bill Cooke says the origin of the mysterious boom still remains unclear but shut down the NWS’ theory of a Leonid shower meteroite.
Cooke says the sound could have been produced by a bolide, large supersonic aircraft or a ground explosion.
According to Cooke, NASA’s meteor scientists will continue to analyze new data in hopes of determining the cause of the ‘boom.’
ABC 33/40 has reached out to Maxwell Air Force Base to see if a pilot could have broken the sound barrier with a training exercise.
Emma Simmons and Patrick Thomas
ABC 3340
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