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Afternoon shaking was not a quake

Many residents of northeastern Maryland felt a series of tremors this afternoon, and Joe MulQueen figured the shaking his house took must have been an earthquake. "It sounded like an explosion, but the entire house shook," he said.

But area seismographs were quiet. The shakes were the result of explosions at the U.S. Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground. Base spokesman George Mercer said the blasts included three "static detonations" at the facility's Edgewood Area. "And they were loud," he said.

Aberdeen Proving Ground areaA temperature inversion - a layer of warm air atop a layer of cold air at the surface - caused the sonic energy to reflect back to the ground rather than dissipate into the sky above. That just made matters worse, he said.

The noise and shaking was heard and felt from Perry Hall to Middletown Del. Mercer took 30 calls from concerned citizens. About 20 of them were complaints, the rest just expressions of concern and curiosity. 

There is more on the incident at Baltimoresun.com and there will be an article in Wednesday's print editions. Break a buck and buy one. Our kids gotta eat, too.

Comments

Received this note tonight from Steven Brown:

"Frank I live in North East and my condo shook twice this afternoon. I can hear the booms some days from APG and I know it was thick cloud cover today but I have never heard anything so loud that it made the house shook. I did wonder if it was an earthquake. Thanks for the reporting and all the good weather articles."


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About the blogger
Frank Roylance is a reporter for The Baltimore Sun. He came to Baltimore from New Bedford, Mass. in 1980 to join the old Evening Sun. He moved to the morning Sun when the papers merged in 1993, and has spent most of his time since covering science, including astronomy and the weather. One of The Baltimore Sun's first online Web logs, the Weather Blog debuted in October 2004. In June 2006 Frank also began writing comments on local weather and stargazing for The Baltimore Sun's print Weather Page.
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