NEW ORLEANS — People across New Orleans reported hearing a loud boom overnight, but officials say they don’t know yet what caused the mysterious noise.
Residents from Algiers to the Gentilly neighborhoods say they heard what sounded like an explosion. Residents in the Marigny and Bywater areas told the Times-Picayune | New Orleans Advocate that the explosion shook their homes around 11:15 p.m. The New Orleans police and the fire department said they received several calls reporting the explosion, but neither department has confirmed a cause.
“That’s very odd,” Tim Erickson, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Slidell told the newspaper.
Some residents took to social media to report the boom.
“Anybody in New Orleans hear a huge boom about 10 minutes ago? Like a giant, distant explosion,” one Twitter user wrote.
Possible Meteorite?
Some residents speculated that the sonic boom could have been caused by a meteorite crashing into earth. A similar event was reported in Pennsylvania on New Year's Day.
According to the NASA Meteor Watch Facebook Page, residents in western Pennsylvania reported sonic booms before 11:30 a.m. on Jan. 1. which was later confirmed as a large meteor exploding in the atmosphere. NASA later said the blast wave as the meteor broke apart was equivalent to 30 tons of TNT. NASA said that it assumes the meteor was traveling around 45,000 miles per hour and was around a yard in diameter.
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