GASTON COUNTY, N.C. — The Mount Holly Police Department is explaining what caused several loud booms in the area over the past two week that prompted a flurry of 911 calls.
The department agrees that a meteor captured on camera in Huntersville earlier this week caused one of the booms.
As for the other noises, the department blames a train releasing its brakes and a weather phenomenon known as frost quakes.
The latest "sonic boom” that was heard almost certainly came from a meteor breaking up in the atmosphere, according to Jim Craig, the planetarium director at The Schiele Museum in Gastonia.
Channel 9 showed Craig video captured by a home security camera in Huntersville that captured a bright fireball in the night sky early Wednesday morning.
(Source: YouTube, "rungoiron")
"That's amazing," Craig said as he watched the YouTube video. "That's a meteor. There is no doubt."
Craig said he has seen scores of videos of meteors, and the latest one had all of the hallmarks of a space rock about the size of a baseball.
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(Jim Craig)
The homeowner told Channel 9 that his camera captured the object breaking up in the sky at about 4:08 a.m. Several people reported hearing a loud boom in Mount Holly between 4:10 a.m. and 4:15 a.m.
Craig said they most likely heard the rock breaking up high above the ground.
He said the chances of meteors causing the other two blasts heard around town in the past two weeks is "astronomical, pun intended."
[Neighbors, police puzzled by mysterious 'sonic boom' in Mt. Holly]
Neighbors in Mount Holly reported hearing a wall-shaking, window-rattling boom on Saturday, Jan. 14 and a similar sound three days later.
People around town that Channel 9 spoke with said the sound heard on Wednesday morning wasn't as loud but still troubling to hear. One woman said it sounded like a large truck dropping a dumpster.
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There were 30 emergency 911 calls to Mount Holly police about the blast heard on Jan. 17 -- so many that police went to Facebook to ask people not to call about the sound.
The police chief said he believes the noise heard on Jan. 14 was caused by an atmospheric disturbance but offered no explanation for the sound on Jan. 17.
The WSOC-TV weather team checked and found no indications of weather issues and no reported earthquakes or seismic disturbances in the area on Jan. 17.
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