UPDATE: Naval Air Station Patuxent River and Maryland Emergency Management Agency confirmed on their social media pages that, “Two supersonic flights from the naval air station were conducted off of the Atlantic Coast today, Feb. 6, during routine testing and training events.”
These supersonic flights caused sonic booms that were felt throughout coastal regions of Delaware, Maryland, and New Jersey.
A sonic boom is a sound associated with shock waves created by an object traveling through the air faster than the speed of sound. Sonic booms generate enormous amounts of sound energy, sounding much like an explosion.
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Previous coverage:
RIO GRANDE – Tremors were felt throughout Cape May County around noon Feb. 6. If you are one of the local folks who thought they felt the earth move, you may be right. Then again, you may not. The vote is still out on this one.
“It was sometime after 12 p.m.,” said Robert Baals of Erma. “Our whole house shook! We’ve had this house for about 30 years and have felt a few similar tremors before. We were just wondering if anyone else felt it today?”
“I’m not seeing anything on our maps right now,” said Karen Peterson, a cartographer at U.S. Geological Survey in Anchorage, Alaska at around 1 p.m. EST. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean an earthquake didn’t happen.” Peterson also said that slight quakes don’t always register on their sensors. “I have no doubt that people felt something. It could be due to construction or trains or other factors.”
A follow-up call to the U.S. Geological Survey National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colorado yielded similar results.
Though there aren’t any trains to speak of in Cape May County, there are occasionally jets that fly overhead that have the potential of creating sonic booms. However, Lt. Remoshay Nelson of the Dover Air Force Base reported that the 436 Civil Engineer Squadron “did not conduct training (Feb. 6). Nor did we have any aircraft in the area.”
To contact Bryon Cahill, email bcahill@cmcherald.com.
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