Ozarks shaken by massive boom, meteor explosion suspected, US
A massive boom was heard and felt over much of the Ozarks shortly after noon (local time) on June 6, 2018. The National Weather Service said their working theory is a meteor exploding high in the atmosphere.
"I felt the ground shake and wondered what in the world?" said Willow Springs resident Lloyd Ebert, adding he saw a contrail near the edge of a cloud 'that looked like smoke all around it.'
Mike Griffin, a meteorologist at the NWS Springfield office said they got a call from the Little Rock office that they were getting many reports from the Mountain Home area about a very loud, shaking boom. "We talked to the Howell County dispatch center and they were taking a tremendous amount of calls."
"I checked with the USGS and they had nothing registered as an earthquake, so that can be ruled out," Griffin said, as reported by Springfield News-Leader.
"It was a fairly loud boom, a fairly good concussion," said Steve Gleghorn, administrator of Howell County 911, who was outside when the boom happened.
"A police officer said he saw a contrail about that time then heard the boom. I just spoke with him again and he said he saw two short contrails northwest of West Plains, but never saw an airplane. Then, and I'm quoting him, 'it went 'BOOM' and it scared the hell out of me.' "
Although the logical conclusion could be a sonic boom from a jet flying faster than the speed of sound, Griffin said that the wide range of reports indicated the boom must have occurred very high in the atmosphere, higher than military planes normally fly.
Featured image: Trail left by Chelyabinsk asteroid on February 15, 2013, Russia.
The boom was strong with a drawn out series of echos from the elevated terrain to the SW. Interpret this as placing the source of the boom N to E of the observing location. This would place the noise source roughly on a line between West Plains, Mo., and north of Branson, Mo. In a direction Northwest of Gainsville, Mo. a subdued sound like that of a departing military aircraft with afterburner, as heard from many miles distance, was present immediately after the boom. Local weather presented low bright overcast cloud at time of the incident.