Mysterious booms shook the ground around southwest Bloomington Friday

Cheyenne Mobley thought it was her toddler jumping around in the next room, causing the floors to shake just before noon Friday. Then her mother-in-law texted: “Did you feel that?”

Mobley turned down the movie she and her other son were watching to notice. “It was a very big bang and then even more, in clusters. The floors shook and the windows rattled. I heard my dishes rattling in the cupboards.”

About a dozen concerned citizens in southwest Bloomington called 911 around noon to report what Mobley felt and heard, some sort of explosions or blasts that shook the earth beneath their feet between 11:57 a.m. and 12:02 p.m. Mobley said there was no persistent rumbling. to indicate an earthquakejust a long series of bangs.

Monroe County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Jeff Brown said there was no immediate explanation. “Central Dispatch said they had received about a dozen calls reporting the mysterious explosions,” he said. “No cause was ever found by MCSO or ISP.”

Todd Thompson, state geologist and director of the Geological and Water Survey of Indiana in Bloomington confirmed there was no earthquake. ‘There’s nothing I know, and the USGS earthquake map shows nothing,” he said in response to an email inquiry. “There must have been construction somewhere in the city.”

Mobley said she was used to the noise and earthquakes from the explosions in area quarries, but said this was different and quite frightening because it lasted for five minutes.

A message was left on Crane Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane Divisiona joint Navy-Army installation 30 miles southwest of Bloomington, did not return in time for this story Friday afternoon.

Another mystery: Was that big ‘thump’ heard in southern Indiana on Wednesday a meteor?

Just before 1 p.m. on a Wednesday in March 2022, people in Monroe and surrounding counties heard a disturbingly loud “boom,” the cause of which remains a mystery.

People speculated that it was everything from a meteor to a sonic boom from a speeding plane.

Contact HT reporter Laura Lane at [email protected] or 812-318-5967.

This article originally appeared in The Herald-Times: What caused the series of explosions southwest of Bloomington Friday was a mystery