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Baraboo, Wisconsin Lights and Booms
UPDATE 4/5: Here are some videos about Baraboo.
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Another small town in Wisconsin is hearing booms but this time they’re being accompanied by lights. That’s odd because I thought the booms were coming from the ground. What do lights in the sky have to do with booms in the ground. There were no reports of thunderstorms and the National Weather Service can’t make any connection in terms of weather. The lights were observed BEFORE the booms.
From the article here:
“I observed a large flash of light followed by a ‘boom,’” the officer wrote in his report. “I advised dispatch of this information and my belief that it was possibly a transformer.”
However, Sauk County Sheriff’s Department dispatchers contacted Alliant Energy, and reported the company knew of no power outages in the Baraboo area.
Is this related to earthquakes as they say occurred in Clintonville. There is something called “earthquake lights”.
From wiki:
An earthquake light is an unusual luminous aerial phenomenon that reportedly appears in the sky at or near areas of tectonic stress, seismic activity, or volcanic eruptions.
- Clintonville, Montello and Baraboo
From what I read, it would occur during a real earthquake. The wiki definition says nothing about flashes of light followed by booms. Earthquake lights are not well understood but you can read more at the link here. The lights don’t make any sense because the booms are supposedly coming from the ground.
Now we have booms in Clintonville, Montello and Baraboo. The events seem to be on a path.
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New Zealand Booms and Lights
A green, orange and white fire ball left a sort of strange corkscrew trail as it flew at high speed across New Zealand. Two minutes AFTER, a very loud boom was heard.
From the article:
A Hanmer Springs resident said they heard ‘a loud boom’ about two minutes after it streaked past.
‘Not sure if hit the ground or sonic boom, perhaps the latter, very exciting! Much more exciting than putting the washing out.’
Astronomers say it was very unlikely the meteor will be found. Article is here.
MORE AFTER THE JUMP…
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Oklahoma Booms and Lights
In this video, a family disturbed by a loud boom steps outside to investigate. They find nothing. A few minutes AFTER, they witness a very bright light appearing to be suspended in the sky. The light is coming from the direction of a military base.
They seem perplexed by the intensity of the light and wonder if it’s a plane. The wife says there is smoke coming down. He goes on to point out that a plane would have crashed. You can see the light literally suspended as if its coming from a source in the sky. My first thought was a flare but that wouldn’t cause a loud boom and illuminate that large of an area. Clearly this couple has never seen this before. If it’s over a base maybe it’s a weapon or military experiment.
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Pocono Lights and Booms
Folks in the Poconos heard thunder they swear was no thunder. I realize I already covered this but here it is again for comparison sake. A witness saw lights BEFORE the booms. From the article here:
“My son was at the back door letting the dogs out and he reported that he saw a large flash of light fill the sky toward/above the FedEx distribution site on 940, then he heard a loud boom. It didn’t look like lightning, it looked like a bomb blew up in the air. I was on the second floor of the house; I didn’t see anything but I heard the boom and felt it shake the house. The floors shook; I have never felt lightning shake the house like that before and we’ve been up here 20 years!”
The New Zealand event seems to be a meteor but i doubt that the sound was related to the projectile.
If the sound was related and came 2 minutes later then the boom should have been some 64km away, difficult for a sound to go that far although not impossible (it is stated that some large volcano eruptions like the Krakatoa were heard in much larger distances than this).
Also the trail points to the direction that the event was not that high, so if it was a really loud one you never know..
The Oklahoma event is most probably just an illumination flare dropped from some plane and going down with a parachute. I’ve seen such flares several times in SAR operations (Search And Rescue).
The earthquake light are not like flashes but like glows covering large areas and usually mountain tops. They are a type of electrostatic discharge and the are knows since ancient times.
Latest research on Earthquakes points to the direction that they are a highly electric in origin phenomenon and that there are significant anomalies in electron/ion densities in the ionosphere related to pre-earthquake activity.
Here is a relevant paper: http://www.nat-hazards-earth-syst-sci.net/10/7/2010/nhess-10-7-2010.pdf
What we observe is a built up of energy in the earthquake region with currents flowing from the ionosphere to the epicenter. This flow is increasing for a few weeks before the event, then slows down and finally stops few hours before the event.
To me this is similar to charging a capacitor till you have a dielectric breakdown.
Finally the Pocono event is probably some type of explosion. Can be related to meteors cause all meteors that come close to the ground they are hit by lightning and explode (the Tunguska event was also a meteor explosion close to the ground)
Here some examples:
Hang on! In NZ, astronomers say it was very unlikely that the meteor WOULD BE FOUND. Not unlikely that it was a meteor.
That’s a HUGE error that ends up skewing the story and is misinformation.
My bad. I misread it. It has been updated.
About newzealand meteor, you mentioned it was said by astronomers that it was very unlikely to be a meteorite………… All that was said was it was very unlikely to be found.
And the vapour trail was corkscrewed from air currents.
This has been corrected, see text.
I think we run into problems when we assume that seperate events are related. A boom in one place isn’t necessarily related to a boom in another, a flash of light isn’t necessarily related to any other lights, or one event isn’t necessarily the same thing as another even though they appear or are reported to be similar…
…a flash before a boom would sort of indicate that something blew up, given that light travels faster than sound… and that light can also be emited by chemical reactions, electricity, etc, not just explosions. The idea of “earthquake lights” doesn’t seem all that strange when you consider the process going on under ground and the actual physics behind lightning and whats going on between the sky and the earth.
The streak in the sky down under is obviously something crashing… no mystery there. WHAT is crashing is a different story, maybe a plane, maybe a space rock, maybe aliens (sucks to be them).
It’s hard to say what’s goin on in WI… the USGS says earthquakes. Plausable. Perhaps the ‘booms’ in other areas are also earthquakes, or maybe someone is setting off low alt fireworks to replicate that? It certainly wouldn’t be the first group of people to hoax an event!
Point: science is the search for truth, not an art project to draw lines between EVERYthing…
I don’t think they’re related, I just think they are similar. They are meant to be presented as separate stories, you can draw you’re own conclusions.
Linda Moulton Howe, at earthfiles.com, has an important update on the N. American booms and earthquakes. She also reports on a new paper to be presented at an upcoming Seismological Society of America meeting called “Are Seismicity Rate Changes in the Midcontinent Natural or Manmade?” She opens the article with the following quote:
“If it turns out booms are coming from a mile or two deep,
yeah, it’s small earthquakes. But if the cause is determined to be
only about 100 feet deep, then something else is happening.”
- Clifford Thurber, Ph.D., Geophysicist, Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison
She also discusses fracking (always thing of Battlestar Gallactica when I hear that word), and the possible connection to a marked increase of earthquakes, as well as additional emails she has received from folks who have experienced loud booms.
This is part three of a pretty exhaustive report which looks into this weird phenomenon. Worth a read.
Ooops… sorry… here’s the link: http://www.earthfiles.com/news.php?ID=1966&category=Environment
that site´s for nuts by nuts lol, nothing remotely credible there and there´s no increase in earthquakes at all
Hey Bob if you don’t like it you can not read it. Thanks.
there´s an increase in earthquake detection
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The Wisconsin sounds made CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/19/us/wisconsin-noises/index.html?iref=obinsite
This came out a week or so ago so apologies if you’ve covered this already. Thanks for your continued objective tracking and thoughts on these matters, Jay– your website is refreshingly well put together.
Not that I think this is an explanation exactly for these events, but the subject of “lights and booms” made me think of this:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/03/light-laser-new/#previouspost
Bob, “no increase in earthquakes” you say. Actually you are correct up to 2010. As far as records show, seismic activity worldwide has been fairly steady since records began (although detection methods have steadily improved). EXCEPT for a spike in large quakes beginning in late 2010. Seismologists generally agree that the ‘spike’ which went around the pacific plate throughout 2011 was a chain reaction event, which of course included the Fukushima event and the Christchurch ‘quakes (whith which I am all too well acquainted, being an affected resident!). Check your facts before opening your mouth, Bob.