"Boom" on Christmas Eve (Texas)

Sorry for posting this in such retrospective, but it's been on my mind and I keep seeing postings about the noises, so I figured I'd post.

Christmas Eve (2011) my fiance and I were at my parents house visiting. They live in the TINY town of Fischer, TX. There is nothing around but Canyon Lake and the Banco River, no jet has ever flown over the house that could be heard, no nothing. So we're sitting around the house reading and conversing; both big dogs were inside laying down, no kids around, and all of a sudden a "BOOM."

It was strange, an unfamiliar rhythm, as my dad and I just looked at each other. His first reaction was "was that a car? That sounded like a crash." So we stepped outside. Off the back deck, there is a wide and shallow valley and only 1 road passes through it. There was nothing...no car crash. Then my fiance and mom walked out of the house, "what was that boom?" They were both in different parts of the house, so it took them a minute to arrive to where we were at on the deck.

We stood there wondering for a minute and strangely, everyone just blew it off as nothing. "Perhaps it was a transformer exploding, you do know those do that from time to time." my mom said. "No, it couldn't have been. We still have power." my dad replied.

I sat their on the couch in silence pondering what that noise actually was. I've been blessed with what's referred to as an audio-syncronic-photographic-memory. Which means I can have total recall of a conversation including the setting, total recall of noises (anything from cars to peoples accents) and I can even usually mimic them with my vocal chords. The reason I'm stating this is that this noise didn't match anything I've EVER heard.

It was akin to a sonic boom, without the crack. Thunder without the roll. It was a definitive "Boom." It was very strange. The weather was clear, cool, and crisp too, so there's no chance it was meteorological in origin. Something also to note, this sound did not have a 'feeling' to it. Whereas most loud booms you can feel in your chest as the vibrations pass through your chest cavity. This one was just a 'noise.' It didn't shake anything in my parents home, and what's even stranger...the dogs didn't seem to hear it.

Does this sound similar to what you folks in TN, KY, MI, OH, and LA have been experiencing? What's interesting is that we both live on large, dormant fault lines. All of you on the giant fault line under the Mississippi, and us on the Balcones Fault that runs the length of I35 from Mexico to Oklahoma. We experience tremors usually in the range of a 2-4 of the richter scale, with 5's every other year or so.

Yes...it does. I am amazed at how reports of this have increased so dramatically in the past 3 months. I'm trying to get a central forum where all these threads can be put in one place because there are just so MANY. I have to leave for work shortly, but I'll be checking back tomorrow. Thanks for sharing your experience.

Hey neighbor! I live just north of you. I didn't hear the boom that you heard but it could have been a jet from Lackland Air Force Base. I've seen those jets as far Norh as Georgetown, probably heading to or from Fort Hood, and as far west as Concan Tx performing flight manuevers. There is also some type of fighter type jet without and weapons attached that flies out of Austin Bergstrom quite often and performs flight manuevers. Not sure who would be out on Christmas Eve doing this....just a guess

reply to post by Xterrain


it was santa breaking the sound barrier

reply to post by Xterrain


Please can you add your experience to a spreadsheet on
This thread

Sure, I'll add my experience to your list and I'll do ya one better. I have an amazing online tool that I use for marketing demographic research for work. It's helped me with all sorts of national logistics for my campaigns, etc. What it does is it takes a spreadsheet and turns it into a demographics map that's then integrated with GoogleMaps. What I'm thinking is that you could PM me your spreadsheet once it's finished, then I can turn it into a kick ass map of all of these occurrences mapped out so maybe we can find an 'epicenter' or at least find the effected region for this new phenomenon.

reply to post by Xterrain


Yes sounds awesome...I will give it 1 more week and then should have enough info...I am going to go through some threads myself see what I can find.

Cheers