That loud ‘boom’ heard in South Jersey was caused by an airplane and weather patterns

It wasn’t an earthquake or an explosion. A supersonic military airplane’s flight combined with weather patterns caused a loud “boom” felt across South Jersey on Friday afternoon, reports show.

At around 2 p.m. Friday, people around South Jersey and down the Shore took to social media to describe a loud noise and shaking near them. Some described the sound of “a door slamming in their house,” while others said they felt shaking.

On Facebook, Derek Warner of Petersburg likened it to “a train or several large trucks going by” for about 30 seconds. Rob Evans in the Upper Township area said he experienced about 10 seconds of “noticeable tremors and rumbling.” Tracy Ace in North Cape May said items in her house were shaking.

By 4:30 p.m. the mystery was solved.

A supersonic military plane departed from the Naval Air Station Patuxnet River in Southern Maryland and flew east along the Atlantic Ocean, then up a “test track” located a few miles offshore from the Delmarva Peninsula to South Jersey, a spokesperson told The Press of Atlantic City.

The news outlet added that while not all supersonic flights can be heard from miles away, Friday’s impact on residents could have been caused by the weather.

“A sonic boom caused by the plane spread in all directions,” the Press of Atlantic City reported. “However, the inversion effectively puts a lid on the atmosphere. Sound that hits the inversion layer then gets deflected to the surface, adding additional noise to the ground that can then spread far away from the aircraft.”

Local meteorologist Joe Martucci wrote on his Facebook page that the combination caused the aircraft to be heard from a distance.

“The weather conditions are ripe for sonic booms to spread for miles and miles,” he said.