Sonic Booms Shake Western Washington

Originally posted by tsi1991awd

Only thing on my mind is why the hell didn't they send jets from Fort Lewis or McChord????

That's what I was thinking, waaaayy closer than Portland. When I drive through the Lakewood/Tacoma area I always see the military jets and big cargo planes.

Can they refuel at that speed?

Second BOOOOOOM BAnnng Bust a wing line.

reply to post by jsettica


Errrm no

2nd line

Originally posted by fasteronfire
I live in Western Washington, I was in the shower and I heard a loud boom quickly followed by another then about 15 seconds later I heard another. It shook the whole house.

I do feel like it would make sense to hear across Western Washington if the jets were scrambled from Portland all the way to Seattle. That is a massive stretch of land.

But on the other hand I don't feel like the whole of the I-5 corridor would have heard it. In my mind I feel like residents closer to Portland should have heard it as the jets were breaking the sound barrier but all the way in Seattle? Do jets also make a boom when they go from faster than the speed of sound to slower? Leaving the sound barrier if you will.

Most likely it's just the conspiracy theorist in me and I want something cool to happen....who knows : )

The "sonic boom" is a transient overpressure wave caused by parts of the aircraft travelling faster than the speed of sound. It doesn't just happen as the aircraft passes through Mach 1. It travels with (actually under) as the jet travels. And each aircraft will have 2 booms. One from the nose and one from the tail. For a more technical explanation see www.sky-flash.com...

My friend heard it and she thought it was 2 explosions. She said the first one made her think the 2nd story of her house was 'coming down' she just took off outside, and her neighbors had done the same - there were people that had ran out of their homes all over the street.

I lived in Europe and the sonic booms were loud and they'd shake the dishes, but I never thought of one of them as being powerful enough to affect my home. They were just loud and would startle the crap out of me.

I guess Americans are not used to them? And maybe those planes were very low? (If that is what it was.)

Just before this incident I happened to see this on the National Park service web cam in North Dakota.

A few years ago in Buffalo, NY a sonic boom, very loud, was heard at about 3:30am. Several people called 911 to report that a house blew up a few away from them and that they heard several smaller booms afterwards, that they said sounded like gunfire. When police and fire personnel arrived to the addresses, including ours, they found nothing. It was later said people in parts of Canada and Pennsylvania called 911 to report the same thing. In 2008 or 2009, about 2 years later, the US air force released a statement saying they tested a plane over Lake Erie and that's what we heard. They didn't think it would cause such a panic. Niagara Air Force Base is a big base in those parts. So its not surprising.

It's also not the first time F-16s were seen intercepting a plane or 2 because of a suspicious passenger. Seeing as no one sees smoke, destruction, death, and fire, it could not have been an explosion. Portland/Seattle is a big area and have a few bases as well. A logical guess would be sonic booms. The question should be: What from. If the president is/was there, then we can assume a heavy military presence in some form.

[edit on 17-8-2010 by DragonFire1024]

reply to post by lauraeleven


My first thought was a shadow from a cloud...then my second thought was black smoke from something as it fades away in spots when it gets to the sky. Nice shot. Any Missile tests scheduled around there? And pretty far from Washington. Maybe unrelated items but still interesting nonetheless.

reply to post by DragonFire1024


Well Theodore Roosevelt National Park is the same latitude as Seattle...just
throwing this out there, for some reason my mind wants to connect
the two, in any case very strange stuff.

Also is you can magnify the picture you will see a rainbow coming out of the
mountain above the "dark spot".

Wow, wonder how fast the reaction time was?

You know, a plane traveling past MPLS just awhile back flying over one hour past and not responding to hails never even got a plane in the air.

Yet if the puppet in chief has someone breach the airspace. BOOOOM, right there. Boy do you not just love the correlation between government official protection and the rest of us?

reply to post by tsi1991awd

Only thing on my mind is why the hell didn't they send jets from Fort Lewis or McChord????

This point is very interesting. Scramble jets from more than 100 miles away, rather than less than twenty miles from Fort Lewis/McChord base.
I would hope they have war jets ready.

I heard the explosions, my first instinct was they were car bombs on SR 167. The sounds appeared to me to come from the west of the 167 valley freeway. I stopped and looked for a while because I was expecting to see huge black plumes of smoke like one would see on an iraq video.

First thing I thought was hmm president 30 miles away, and two big booms. whats going on.

If scrambled jets did actually destroy an aircraft in restricted airspace would they let the public know? And if shot to vapor, would that be two or more explosions or one big one.

Oh and the reason Obama was in Seattle in the first place was to close down I-5 and make rules that nobody could fly their private aircraft while he was there. And he had lunch with a few donation people.

reply to post by lauraeleven


I came by to see if there were any updates on this event - I suppose not. Looks like this one will be hush hush in the media. But wow the cam image is interesting - looks like dark smoke. This is enough to get me back to one of my previous addictions - viewing web cams.

reply to post by lauraeleven


It's a fly sitting on the camera lens.


[edit on 2010/8/17 by IAttackPeople]

Just some updates and what not.

www.kirotv.com...

www.komonews.com...

www.king5.com... sonic-booms-100922594.html

So it looks like the consensus is pretty straight forward across the board. President Obama landed at Boeing Field at approximately 11:00 AM PST, around 1:40 PM PST a small seaplane entered Temporarily Restricted Airspace, the seaplane had two passengers. A couple returning from vacation. When the plane entered the TRA F-15 fighter jets were scrambled from Portland, Oregon to Seattle, Washington. As the planes where leaving Portland they broke the sound barrier causing a sonic boom that was heard from Chehalis, Washington through Seattle, Washington.

I still don't understand a couple things. The biggest of which is as stated in the posts above. Why not use jets from Fort Lewis or McChord AFB? Seems like there is probably a logical explanation but no one has decided to give us answers about that.

There are reports of car alarms, house alarms, broken windows and shaken nerves throughout the Western Washington I-5 corridor.

Not super exciting but glad I got to experience this.

Also one of the links above has an interview with the couple from the seaplane.

Originally posted by fasteronfire
Just some updates and what not.

www.kirotv.com...

www.komonews.com...

www.king5.com... sonic-booms-100922594.html

So it looks like the consensus is pretty straight forward across the board. President Obama landed at Boeing Field at approximately 11:00 AM PST, around 1:40 PM PST a small seaplane entered Temporarily Restricted Airspace, the seaplane had two passengers. A couple returning from vacation. When the plane entered the TRA F-15 fighter jets were scrambled from Portland, Oregon to Seattle, Washington. As the planes where leaving Portland they broke the sound barrier causing a sonic boom that was heard from Chehalis, Washington through Seattle, Washington.

I still don't understand a couple things. The biggest of which is as stated in the posts above. Why not use jets from Fort Lewis or McChord AFB? Seems like there is probably a logical explanation but no one has decided to give us answers about that.

There are reports of car alarms, house alarms, broken windows and shaken nerves throughout the Western Washington I-5 corridor.

Not super exciting but glad I got to experience this.

Also one of the links above has an interview with the couple from the seaplane.

That is great news!!!!! I can't believe this thread is not getting more attention!

I work in an old warehouse and it felt like something big had fallen on our roof, then the second blast felt like something GIANT had fallen on our roof!

It was actually pretty frightening, The Blue Angels were just in town and this sound was easily 1000 times more powerful if not more. All of the businesses in my area were outside investigating and every one thought it was completely odd.

I instantly wrote on facebook and I was soon discovering with in moments that many of my friends experienced the exact same thing.

I ask you this, what kind of craft could make such a loud boom at such a great distance heard all at the same time? I'm talking Tacoma, Kent, Seattle, Bellevue, and Chehalis??? Woow I'm shocked most likely in Olympia too.

We are talking a distance of over 80 miles heard, that is incredible, and was powerful enough to shake buildings to the point of an earthquake.

Now I want to know why the float plane remained unidentified at first..

Laura Joseph who has an interview on youtube, is one of the passengers. She has a three minute interview where she explains leaving Chehalis then flying and seeing a military aircraft, an F15. The F15 never radioed to them, circled by them and went around a mountain and was gone, and so they thought some type of practicing was going on.

When the float plane lands, the passengers were approached by someone, "You weren't suppose to be in the air today."

"I have no idea really," Laura Joseph kept repeating at the end...

I think the reaction by the Air Force is absurd and I want to have a better explanation.

Originally posted by wiredamerican
reply to post by tsi1991awd

 

Only thing on my mind is why the hell didn't they send jets from Fort Lewis or McChord????

This point is very interesting. Scramble jets from more than 100 miles away, rather than less than twenty miles from Fort Lewis/McChord base.
I would hope they have war jets ready.

The combined Ft Lewis-McChord Joint base is a heavy airlift base and not a tactical interceptor base. The primary mission is in support of the 2nd Infantry Division. They may still have some close air support stuff like A-10s but no full-time intercept capability.

I'm sorry, I don't buy the sonic boom story. There is major deep tremor occuring under WA, there was just 2 larger quakes in UT and WY has been having an earthquake swarm. Sorry, I think something much bigger is going on.

[edit on 18-8-2010 by Anmarie96]

reply to post by Anmarie96


Is there any precedent for a sub surface geological event, causing an audible explosive noise and no actual tremor directly associated with it ?
I am curious to know how a geological event could cause a sound to be heard over such a vast area, without an equaly sized tremor being felt in direct correlation to that sound. If the sound was caused by sub surface movement of techtonic plates or something of that nature, I would expect that to be coupled with an easily identifiable movement, with a similar time signature to the explosive sound. From the description of the sound as reported being so powerful, one would reasonably assume that any accompanying geological activity would have to have devastated SOMETHING of note , if that is indeed the cause of the sound.
The sonic boom scenario seems to fit the bill best, and Im sure if the data analysis software were available, you could present a pretty little graph showing the times that the preasure wave from the planes hit the towns where the sound was reported, and I would bet that it matches pretty well with the path of the aircraft, allowing of course for windspeeds and so on.

reply to post by TrueBrit


Here is an ongoing ATS Thread in which the discussion of booms have been being heard.

Here is another thread were we are following the tremor.

Here is another thread in what I experienced here on the East Coast of the events of this morning

Below is the list of quakes that occurred around the same time of these "Sonic Booms"


18.08.2010 - 12:53:01 2.9 North America USA Utah Mayfield USGS Result
18.08.2010 - 12:52:32 3.8 North America USA Utah Kanarraville USGS Result
18.08.2010 - 12:51:43 4.1 North America USA Utah Kanarraville USGS Result


Edit spelling - Whoopsy

[edit on 18-8-2010 by Anmarie96]

And then there is This which was also discussed in the WA thread -

I think mother nature is on a roll

[edit on 18-8-2010 by Anmarie96]

reply to post by Anmarie96


Wow... thanks for clarifying for me. Seems that mother nature has a case to answer on that score after all!