Mystery boom


This local article, on which the C2C report is based, is really eye opening. It claims the boom was reported in Charleston, Columbia, and Greenville. If you look at the map of SC, Charleston and Greenville are on opposite sides of the state (roughly 200 miles), with Columbia close to being equidistant between them. That tells me the blast sound carried at least 100 miles. Since sound is radial (as opposed linear/unidirectional), the same boom should have been heard in parts of both Georgia and North Carolina, and maybe even southeastern Tennessee.

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I'm neither an atmospheric scientist or a physicist, but remembering sound abides by the inverse square law, I'd think the boom must have originated fairly high in the atmosphere and been very energetic. In other words, one hell of a bang.

The obvious answer, and one not mentioned in either article, is a sonic boom caused by an supersonic a/c breaking the sound barrier. There are at least two military air bases in SC (Shaw AFB and Beaufort MCAS) that operate supersonic aircraft (F-16s/F-18s), plus any number of transient a/c that could have over flown the state.
 

This local article, on which the C2C report is based, is really eye opening. It claims the boom was reported in Charleston, Columbia, and Greenville. If you look at the map of SC, Charleston and Greenville are on opposite sides of the state (roughly 200 miles), with Columbia close to being equidistant between them. That tells me the blast sound carried at least 100 miles. Since sound is radial (as opposed linear/unidirectional), the same boom should have been heard in parts of both Georgia and North Carolina, and maybe even southeastern Tennessee.

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I'm neither an atmospheric scientist or a physicist, but remembering sound abides by the inverse square law, I'd think the boom must have originated fairly high in the atmosphere and been very energetic. In other words, one hell of a bang.

The obvious answer, and one not mentioned in either article, is a sonic boom caused by an supersonic a/c breaking the sound barrier. There are at least two military air bases in SC (Shaw AFB and Beaufort MCAS) that operate supersonic aircraft (F-16s/F-18s), plus any number of transient a/c that could have over flown the state.
As always we are so lucky to have you here Duke, thank you for this hypothesis
 
As always we are so lucky to have you here Duke, thank you for this hypothesis
Glad you posted here, reminded me to update this. I went back and looked at newspaper, TV/radio, and police websites/Facebook pages for both Columbia and Greenville for this date. None of them reported the blast being heard/having been heard locally. A few of those sites did report the boom as a Charleston story, however.

That tells me, despite what the SC Emergency Management Division said about reports in those two other cities, this was a localized Charleston event. Considering all the military air bases in that part of the South, highly likely this was a sonic boom.
 
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