Big Boom Shakes Southern Connecticut

This article was originally posted and written by Madison Patch Editor Pem McNerney with some reporting by Associate Regional Editor Ronald DeRosa

A loud boom was heard throughout several towns along the Connecticut shoreline and in New Haven County Friday evening, prompting several 911 calls and brief flurry of social media posts.

Madison 911 Communications Center numerous calls from people reporting what sounded like an explosion shortly after 10 p.m. Friday, according to a post on Facebook, " ... along shoreline neighborhoods and as far north as County Road and Guilford Lakes. Also getting reports of the same thing as far west as West Haven and Milford. Anybody know what happened???"

The post on the Madison 911 Communications Center Facebook page quickly received responses from people as far inland as Haddam. 

Around 11 p.m., Madison 911 followed up with this information: 

"Just to reiterate: We've investigated and checked in with several other agencies (including on Long Island)... many other towns getting similar reports of a single loud "boom", no reports of light flashes or power outages in the area. Our best guess is that this was a huge thunder clap. Mother nature playing tricks on us while we're already on edge."

Readers for several Patch sites in southern Connecticut — including Wallingford — posted to our Facebook pages saying they heard the booming sound. 

"We heard and felt it on the Hamden/Wallingford town line," said reader Dennis Demott.

Suzanne Novak, from Madison, reported that it shook her house in Legend Hill. 

People living on the shoreline in Clinton reported hearing it as well. 

While it may have been thunder, many people reported that it was just one boom, and that it shook the ground, making it sound like an explosion.

And, with the entire country riveted by the tragedy earlier this week in Boston, and the drama that unfolded today as one bombing suspect was killed and another captured, explosions were on everyone's minds, perhaps making them more apt to report something out of the ordinary to 911. 

The National Weather Service did say that conditions were ripe for a thunderstorm Friday night. 

Jay, on the Madison Patch Facebook page, wondered if it was a bolide, or a meteor that explodes when it hits the atmosphere. The American Meteor Society website did not log any reports of that overnight, but we have an inquiry in to them to see if this might be a plausible explanation for the sound. 
Several calls came into dispatch centers other than Madison, including Connecticut State Troopers at Troop F in Westbrook, and other shoreline towns, according to the responses on the Madison 911 inquiry.