The ground shaking sparked a flurry of posts on social media from residents trying to figure out what caused the ground to rattle.
Advertisement
A spokeswoman for Naval Air Station Patuxent River said an F-35C and an F-18 were conducting routine supersonic flight testing over the Atlantic Ocean on Thursday afternoon.
Scientists at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University concurred, telling the Asbury Park Press that there were no “obvious seismic signals”. The mystery deepened for a time when officials with NORAD were quoted as saying that there were no sonic booms off New Jersey. Initially thought to be natural disaster tremors, the US Navy reported that the booms may have been caused by flight testing.
He said residents on the ground likely would not have heard the booms but would have experienced 15 to 20 seconds of shaking during each one. “Other military aircraft, including both Navy and Air Force, also frequently use the ranges for testing and training”.
A sonic boom is the result of changes in air pressure that happen when an object, such as a supersonic jet, breaks the sound barrier. The incident’s initial report said the tremors were caused by a sonic boom, not an natural disaster.
This is not an uncommon occurrence.
Concerned citizens reported the shaking to their local police departments by the hundreds, prompting local law enforcement agencies to request that citizens cease reporting the phenomenon.
Test aircraft from the naval air station fly nearly daily along the same route, according to the base’s spokeswoman, but most sonic booms are never heard on land. There weren’t any other reports of damage and no reports of injuries.
Booms can occur due to flight speeds, direction of flights and weather conditions and the usually try to avoid certain conditions to avoid causing booms according to NAWCAD’s Bill Couch.
Advertisement
This report contains material from Reuters.
