Mysterious booms rattle houses in Florida

A mysterious series of loud booms have shaken a Florida county in the afternoon of Dec. 4. Residents of Escambia County in the state’s western tip heard big booms and rumblings that shook houses. The source of the mysterious phenomenon remains unknown as earthquakes, storms or other possible causes were not reported in the area.

Loud booms leave several residents baffled

News website North Escambia reported that it was flooded with comments from people reporting the incident starting a quarter past noon. Most of the comments were from the Cantonment and Beulah areas, but other reports also came from the neighboring Santa Rosa County.

A Laura B said she heard two loud booms that sounded neither like sonic booms nor thunder. She surmised that the sounds might have been related to the big trucks that recently arrived in their neighborhood, though she had never heard these trucks and their equipment produce such sounds before. “If we had any shaking, though, it was mild enough for me to associate with the slow-moving trucks,” she added.

One person named Charlotte was sitting with her husband in their living room when they heard “a loud rumbling coming closer and closer.” Afterward, continued the woman, they heard a loud boom that shook their house before gradually disappearing as if it were going “further and further away.”

The rumblings were intense enough to cause some damage. One person named Leslie said that the rattling caused minor damage to their toilet, while a Troy Barton said it left a large crack on the ceiling and forced several dishes off their shelf.

The residents have their own theories as to what caused the booms, with many of them saying the event might have been an earthquake. “We’ve lived in California and have felt earthquakes before, this seemed like one. I’m pretty sure it would have registered as a geologic event,” said one Sandy Net.

Another person also thinks that the booms were caused by an earthquake: “I was online having a meeting and told my buddy ‘I think we’re about to have an earthquake out here again, I’m feeling tremors.'”

But someone from the website, named Theresa, said that though Florida is near the Caribbean Plate, it is not sitting on any known fault lines and earthquakes are rare in the state. “So I would doubt it was an earthquake. Probably the air force base doing their sonic booms,” Theresa wrote. (Related: Unexplained “booming noises” baffles people around the world.)

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) did not record an earthquake in the area. Many people on the website also said that though the booms sounded like thunder, there was nothing on the weather radar to suggest one.

Loud booms were heard before in the area

North Escambia reported that a similar event also occurred on Oct. 3 around the same areas in the county. Hundreds of messages and comments inundated the news outlet, and the county 911 also received several calls. Most of the comments were concentrated in Molino in the north across Beulah in the south, while other reports came from Santa Rosa County as well as the adjacent Baldwin County in Alabama.

One Molino Pilgrim Hills resident said that he felt around three to four consecutive “unusual booms.” He assumed that these were caused by a wreck of some sort or a nearby land clearing project. However, the Escambia County Fire Rescue checked some of the areas and did not find anything that might have caused the booms. Also, the USGS did not report an earthquake.

Read more reports of mysterious events at Unexplained.news.

Sources include:

StrangeSounds.org

NorthEscambia.com 1

USGS.gov

NorthEscambia.com 2