What would cause a boom loud enough to shake your house?

[kaw1218]

We had that happen before.

Except the boom was strong enough to shatter lots of windows.

There was an explosion at a plastics factory about 12 miles away.

amazingly, no one really got hurt.
It was the scariest noise i've even heard.

 

[KyraS]

No I'm actually in Tennessee nowhere near California. I checked the Earthquake sight and even though there is a fault line in Arkansas there has been nothing reported.

 

[Feralpeg]

I did fall on my rear last night. It felt quite jarring, but I'm not sure you would have felt it in Tennessee. I tripped on the dog's bone. By the way, my bottom is quite sore!

 

[KyraS]

I did fall on my rear last night. It felt quite jarring, but I'm not sure you would have felt it in Tennessee. I tripped on the dog's bone. By the way, my bottom is quite sore!

Nah I don't think that was it Sorry about your booty though!

 

[reeeoga]

It was Free Taco Day! to jump on an earlier idea.

 

[malibuconlee]

Transformer blew probably.

Yeah. that's happened here at least twice since we moved here. It's pretty loud.

We also get shaking and loud noises from the Army base. I'm always surprised because we aren't right outside the base or anything, we're in the next town over.

 

[GRUMPY PIRATE]

Don't worry, it was probably some local militants practicing blowing things up!

 

[GRUMPY PIRATE]

Once my dh was trying to start a fire in the back (long story) and he couldn't get it to ignite. He finally pours some accelerant on it (not sure what) and lights it. I was standing in the kitchen, which faces the back of the house, and I FELT the giant boom and it shook our whole house.
I ran to the window to see dh running away from his fire, LOL.
He's never lived this story down and hates it when I tell it to our friends, lol.

That reminds me of the window commercial, wher one lady is showing the new windows to another, and the husband is in the background trying to barbeque, except things go very very wrong!, and of course they can't hear him, because the windows keep out the sound!

 

[pittypat]

If a gas pipeline had exploded you'd probably be able to actually hear the resulting fire. This happened about 20 miles away from us this summer and we could hear the fire-it sounded like the roar of a jet. Blowing transformers, even many miles away, can cause a boom like that.

 

[Dakota_Lynn]

About two years ago, I heard this incredibly loud BOOM. It shook the whole house and stuff even fell off the shelves in my office. I was ready to duck and cover! Yikes! Once I realized that my little town wasn't under attack, I went out to investigate and could not figure out what it was until the next day. It was in the paper that a large propane tank exploded about a mile away. My gosh, that was LOUD.

 

[SwedishMeatball]

Last November this happened at my house, the windows literally rattled - turns out there was a gas explosion in my pants.

Oh my goodness, Pam.

 

[Am_I_There_Yet]

I had this happen to me when I lived in Houston. A salt dome exploded, killing several people driving past it, several towns over (Brenham). It shook all of my windows and blew the door off of my BIL's shop.

I used to live near Eglin AFB (in Destin), and when they'd test bombs, not only would it shake my windows, but it would make my knees collapse if I was walking. It was the strangest feeling. If they were dropping a big one, they'd broadcast a warning on the news for all the residents surrounding the area. I really miss living near there. It was cool.

 

[Nancy]

A few years ago we had something similar happen here - a loud boom and the house shook. It repeated about 30 minutes later. One of the plastic covers on our bathroom vents fell off and broke.

We saw on the news the next day that there had been a couple of 2.x earthquakes recorded in our area at those times.

ETA: Oklahoma

Same here. We had a teeny one and the boom from it woke me from a sound sleep. (I worked overnights then and slept during the day). I had the dishwasher running and thought it exploded! Then I thought it must have been a plant explosion, but turned on the TV and saw it was an earthquake.

 

[kat3668]

Last November 23 we had a similar experience in the middle of the night, it literally blew me off my bed and flung my cat across the room. A chemical plant just across the water exploded and caused a massive path of destruction for a half a mile. Luckily we were on the back side of the explosion and our house was not damaged.. some homes on the front side were not so lucky. It was the scariest thing I have ever experienced! Several homes and businesses were destroyed and are yet to be rebuilt one year later.
Governor Mitt Romney toured the destruction and called it a "Thanksgiving miracle," echoing the sentiment of rescuers and firefighters who were amazed that no one was killed.

"The miracle is that you have the equivalent of a 2,000-pound bomb going off in a residential neighborhood at night when everybody is home and no one is dead and no one is seriously hurt," said Romney.

 

[MOMTOCUTESTDOGEVER]

When the meth lab that was next door to a house rented blew up, the whole house shook. Maybe that's what caused it.

 

[hpygrll]

This happened to us once. We jumped straight out of bed it was so loud...no explosion, no sonic boom. We contacted some local geological society - they said it was a "freeze quake" - when the ground freezes really fast and then is shifts. They also said it could have been a meteor...very odd.

Jenny

 

[MosMom]

At our old house this would happen on a regular basis. We didn't live near anything that should have been causing a loud boom and making our house shake but it would happen sometimes a few times a week.

 

[maelstrom]

My first thought was a sonic boom. You don't have to live really close to a military base to have that happen. I've never heard a sonic boom before, that I can recall, but I have heard horribly loud jets go by that make the most eerie sound. But I live about half an hour away from an Air Force base, so it's not terribly surprising when that happens.

It also could have been a fuel explosion. You'll know it when one of those huge oil tanks blows up. Do you have any oil companies nearby, or a plant/factory that uses those kinds of tanks? My family's lumber yard is next door to an oil company, and a week ago we had a drunk driver slam into one of our buildings. We were just glad that he didn't fly into one of the oil tanks instead.

I don't think a car accident would've made your house shake, unless the accident involved a fuel truck and it blew up.

I'm thinking that you (and the rest of us) would know by now if a meteor or atomic bomb had been dropped near your house, so it probably wasn't that.

 

[KyraS]

Well nothing on the news or in the paper about it so . I guess I'm going to stick with the Sonic Boom theory as if anything had exploded surely it would have made the news.

 

[emdav]

My house has shook for lightning and an earthquake.