Tim Steller’s column: Tucson’s ‘mystery booms’ elude local anchor’s explanation | subscribers

Then Marie goes down his list. He calls Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. He calls Luke Air Force Base near Phoenix. He calls Asarco to see if they’ve been using explosives at the mines.

“Out of all these incidents, they’ve never been doing mining explosions that day,” he said. “Out of all these years, there’s been one sonic boom reported on the same day, but it wasn’t at the same time.”

Seismic network needed

Marries also calls Beck or other members of the UA’s geosciences department, who typically find that something registered on their seismometer.

Beck doesn’t know what explains them all. She’s discounted earthquakes because of the seismological signature and the sound. She also doubts mining explosions, because of the distance they seem to travel.

Beck leans toward sonic booms as the explanation. With Southern Arizona’s dry climate and steep topography, jets could break the sound barrier a long way away, with the effects rippling toward us probably from the west.

“I think it’s an atmospheric disturbance, most likely a sonic boom of some sort that couples into the ground as it comes across,” she said.

A few steps could start solving the mystery. Simple ones include mapping where people feel them and registering the times. Marries has got reports from SaddleBrooke to Sierra Vista, and lately they usually happen between late morning and mid-afternoon.

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