Fighter jets caused sonic booms along coast

The USGS received reports of eight spikes in multiple South Jersey locations over 90 minutes caused by the likely sonic boom.

Sonic booms heard and felt along the eastern shoreline were caused by military fighter jets conducting tests, officials said.

Navy spokeswoman Connie Hempel said an F-35C and F-18 from Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, were conducting supersonic testing off the coast Thursday afternoon.

A series of sonic booms shook the southern part of New Jersey to Long Island, which is believed to be triggered by United States naval aircraft testing in the area.

The tremors produced numerous emergency calls to local police departments, some of which took to Twitter to ask residents not to flood their lines with more reports.

The McGuire base said in a Twitter post around 3:30 p.m. that its training ranges were clear and that none of its aircraft are capable of creating sonic booms. “We’ve analyzed our signals and have seen no evidence of an quake in the area, but we have recorded several signals that are consistent with a sonic boom”.

Different shakes kept being felt on and off, said people in various towns.

A sonic boom is a sound caused by shock waves when an object travels through the air faster than the speed of sound. There weren’t any other reports of damage and no reports of injuries. The test wing is critical to the safe test and evaluation of all types of Navy and Marine Corps aircraft in service and in development and is primarily based out of Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md.

Won-Young Kim, a research professor at the university, said residents would not have heard the booms but would have experienced up to 20 seconds of shaking for each one.

Booms can occur due to flight speeds, direction of flights and weather conditions and the usually try to avoid certain conditions to avoid causing booms according to NAWCAD’s Bill Couch.