NASA officials had advised that they are looking for the cause of a thunder-like boom reported on September 22 over the Delmarva Peninsula on September 22. Many residents compared the sound to that of a very large tree falling.

Pocomoke City resident Krista Shannon described it as “just a big boom” and that “everything shook” when the noise occurred.

Others in the Delmarva area thought it may have been a sonic boom caused by a passing jet. However,reporters with area station WBOC contacted the Naval Air Station at Patuxent River, where officials confirmed that no flights had been operating in the area at that time.

In the past, the cause of loud mystery booms over the east coast has been believed to be attributed to sonic booms of jets. Jeremy Stone, former president of the Federation of American Scientists, determined that many of the booms reported during the late 1970s were due to flight paths made by the Concorde, a turbojet-powered supersonic passenger jet airliner, which remained in service between 1976 and 2003.

Some scientists have argued that sonic booms, carried inland by unusual jet stream configurations occurring at the time of the booms, could explain periodic rashes of reports occurring over the Northeastern United States. 

Temperature conditions throughout the Delmarva region saw a nighttime average low of 65° on Tuesday night, with an overcast sky.