Atlanta

Boom Report from Metro Atlanta
Offered by Michael, July 21, 2000

Today around 1 p.m. there was some kind of very loud boom noise heard over Atlanta. The sound was registered on a seismograph at Georga Tech (almost downtown and inside the I-285 perimeter). The sound alledgedly shooks the walls of homes. What is interesting about this is that it was not only heard but also felt in the suburb of Marietta... even in my apartment complex some 15-17 miles away. I work in Doraville which is more west of the city and I did not hear it there. Many people called in to radio stations, etc. worried about what the heard and felt. Even a 12 year old boy called in. They are making a report on the news right now about it on WSB channel 2... WOW... this thing was heard from Spaulding County to Cherokee County. It shattered windows... caused bricks to fall off of buildings. Good grief....!!! It almost shut down one county's 911 system flooding it with calls. The claims is (as you might have guessed) "Oh, it's just a sonic boom from an F-15!" Now I have heard lots of sonic booms in my life. Never knew of one to span about 60 miles. Never knew of a sonic boom doing the physical damage that this boom did. I don't believe this boom theory.

Mysterious Boom Shakes West Georgia
The Atlanta-Journal Constitution, August 3, 1999

Residents in four counties along the Georgia-Alabama border were startled by a loud boom and ground tremor for which officials have been unable to determine a source. The disturbance was reported about 10:10 p.m. EDT Monday [Aug 2] in Georgia's Heard and Troup counties and in Alabama's Chambers and Randolph counties, according to law enforcement dispatchers who received a flood of 911 calls. The area is about 70 miles southwest of Atlanta. Gary Crook, a Heard County police dispatcher, described the boom as an "explosion, earthquake, something." The Georgia Emergency Management Agency dispatched a team to the area this morning to see if there was any damage, said spokeswoman Pamela Swanson. She said the earthquake lab at Georgia Tech would try to determine the cause of the boom. The National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo., said it recorded no abnormal seismic activity in the area Monday night. "It sounded like thunder to me, but there wasn't a cloud in the sky," said Albert Walker, a Heard County jailer. Walker said Sheriff Ross Henry planned to call researchers at Georgia Tech in Atlanta today to determine whether the event registered on any monitoring equipment. GEMA spokesman Ken Davis said such a "snap, pop, explosive type shift" typically signifies an earthquake. "Something definitely shifted around," he said. "Exactly what it is, we don't know."