New Booms Over Britain and British Columbia

The mysterious booms kept booming over parts of Great Britain last week with no explanations but plenty of speculations. Meanwhile, earth-shaking noises were heard in an area of British Columbia that had local baby boomers remembering a similar and very expensive sound in the 60s.

A baffling boom was heard by many witnesses in Kingsholm, Gloucester, the evening of September 9th. Local media reported residents leaving their homes and taking to the streets as the boom shook houses and sounded to some as if it were in the immediate vicinity. The single loud noise had no aftershocks and was not accompanied by lights, smells, craters, smoke or other evidence to indicate its source. There have been no explanations so far.

That’s not comforting to residents of Stockport, Rochdale and Middleton in Greater Manchester north of Gloucester. On September 16th, many people in those cities reported a loud, pulsating noise that lasted for five minutes. Some said the noise sounded like it was moving across the sky. Others described it as a low frequency, pulsating bass tone. All of those traits make this boom baffling. Nearby Beetham Tower, the 47-story Manchester skyscraper, is known to create an intermittent hum in windy weather but conditions weren’t right and the sound didn’t match. One witness proposed a link to the earthquake in Chile, which happened at about the same time. No official explanations have been given to date.

Did the mysterious noise then cross the Atlantic? Residents of Oliver in British Columbia heard a loud noise at 3 a.m. on September 18th. The boom set off car alarms and police received numerous calls. This time, local officials actually acknowledged the boom but had no reasons for it. An 2.3 magnitude earthquake had shaken the area four days earlier but nothing was recorded on September 18th.

Oliver is just 100 km (60 miles) from Kelowna, where a boom on August 6th, 1969, caused 6 injuries and a quarter of a million dollars in damages – mostly broken glass. That mysterious noise was solved fairly quickly when the U.S. Navy Blue Angels admitted one of their pilots broke the sound barrier and created a sonic boom while flying too low in preparation for an upcoming show in Kelowna. Finally – a boom with a reason!

Meanwhile, the citizens of Gloucester, Manchester and Oliver cover their ears and wait for either explanations or more booms.