Officials think they know what caused a series of loud booms heard and felt by hundreds of North Texans in Wise County Thursday afternoon -- military aircraft.
The thunderous noise shook homes in Wise County at about 1:30 p.m. Though it lasted just seconds, the booms were still causing noise Thursday afternoon.
“It was crazy,” said Mackoy Hillary. “Everyone heard it.”
Hundreds of people commented on social media Thursday afternoon, talking about what they heard and asking if anyone else heard it too.
“It shook the walls, shook the windows, shook the TVs on the walls, everything,” said Hillary who was at school at the time.
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“We were actually having a Thanksgiving luncheon and we had one of the windows open and we heard, like, a boom, two booms actually,” said Veronica Mares who was at work.
The Wise County Sheriff's Office said between 10 and 15 calls came into its 911 dispatch center in less than 10 minutes, in addition to numerous nonemergency calls, said Chief Deputy Craig Johnson.
Johnson said first responders fanned out to try to find the source of the sound and were quickly able to rule out the worst-case scenarios.
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“From anywhere from shots being fired to explosions to [a] sonic boom,” said Johnson. “Out of all that we came up with sonic boom.”
It’s a predictable conclusion since Wise County is between two North Texas military installations, the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base in Fort Worth and Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls. They get sonic booms from time to time, just not like the one Thursday.
