A day after a loud “boom” was heard in Brown and other area counties the source of the noise remains unclear.
This morning, Brown County Emergency Management Agency Director Susan Armstrong said whatever caused the noise has not been confirmed.
Armstrong said she began receiving calls reporting the loud noise about 10 minutes before 1 p.m.
“It was just a lot of people asking what it was and if I heard it,” she said.
Armstrong said when she first heard the noise she thought it was from activity at Camp Atterbury in Johnson County.
Then the phone calls continued.
“At that point I was on the phone with Monroe County and Johnson County EMAs. We were all trying to figure out what it was. Law enforcement agencies in Monroe County were going to look. I know there were some reports that came into our 911 center,” Armstrong said.
“There were lots of agencies trying to figure out what it was. We weren’t able to come up with anything.”
Camp Atterbury was contacted and confirmed that there were no active accidents or fires there and that they were not doing any kind of exercises that would cause the noise.
But rumors on social media continued, linking the noise to Camp Atterbury.
Brown County EMA then shared a post to Facebook around 2 p.m. about the loud noise, reiterating Camp Atterbury had not reported any kind of explosion or fire there.
“We had already ruled that one out,” Armstrong said about Atterbury.
“We still don’t know officially what it was.”
A meteor?
The American Meteor Society received two reports so far about a possible fireball meteor in the southern Indiana area following the loud “boom.”
Mike Hankey with AMS said in an email this morning that because the event happened during a cloudy day it is more difficult to see meteors, so less reports are made.
But reports were made by one person in Bloomington and another in Columbus.
“These two people both describe what sounds like a meteor in the sky,” Hankey said.
“They also provided direction information that was in agreement enough to triangulate the event. This is a good confirmation it was in fact a fireball meteor and not something else.”
Hankey continued that the “boom” was not from the fireball meteor crashing, but rather from a “sonic boom” from the meteor traveling at “supersonic speeds.”
“Very much like a jet can make a sonic boom. Meteors like this typically blow up/burn out high up in the air and only a few small fragments survive to the ground, if any,” he said.
“A fireball meteor is a larger meteor, oftentimes booms are associated with fireball meteors when they are larger. The boom can be a sign that some meteorites may have survived to the ground.”
The report from Columbus states that a light yellow meteor moved
“up left, down right” at around 12:20 p.m. and that the meteor moved “extremely quickly.”
“Glowing train of same color when I first saw, then there was a gap and another smaller train, followed by singular spot as it disappeared,” the report states about the train of the meteor.
At 12:18 p.m. a report from Bloomington states that “I’ve heard reports of the sound, but no one mentions that flash just before it.”
That report also notes the meteor moved “down right to up left.” It notes that the delayed sound of the meteor sounded like a canon and that the sound the meteor made as it passed over sounded like thunder.
As the investigation continues, AMS will continue to accept reports from anyone who believes they witnessed a meteor in the sky yesterday afternoon. The reports can be submitted online at amsmeteors.org.
Armstrong said the noise yesterday was concerning because of how loud it was. Based on social media comments, the boom was either felt or heard as far away as Kentucky and Illinois.
“It was so loud. It was so different than what we’re normally used to with Atterbury,” she said.
With the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine, a loud noise like yesterday caused more concern than usual, Armstrong continued.
“I was getting calls (saying) ‘Did we go to war?’ ‘Are we being attacked?’ It was a very concerning moment. … It really caused concern just because of the current situation we are in globally, so people were concerned.”
