Meteor explosion may have caused mysterious loud boom heard throughout Indiana

A loud boom rocked multiple Indiana counties on Wednesday, March 30, and now experts believe they have an explanation for the mysterious sound.

The explosion occurred around 12:45 p.m. and was heard in video shared on Facebook by the Cordry-Sweetwater Volunteer Fire Department & Ambulance Corps. The sound was reportedly heard in parts of Monroe, Brown, Johnson, Decatur, Bartholomew, Jackson and Jennings counties in southern Indiana, WXIN said.

It even led the Indiana National Guard to announce that there was not a fire, explosion or detonation at Camp Attebury, which is in Johnson and Bartholomew counties.

So what was it?

Many people believe the sound was caused by a meteor explosion, and experts appear to agree.

Reports from the American Meteor Society show more than a half-dozen accounts of fireballs in the sky the afternoon of March 30. A person from Bloomington observed flashes in the sky before the explosion — which he described as a thundering sound similar to a canon.

A man in Columbus, Indiana, said he saw multiple “glowing train(s)” of a light yellow color. One woman initially thought it was a nuclear explosion.

“I seen the flash through a window with curtains closed about 3 seconds before hearing the boom, which I knew was more than blasting because it shook the building I was in and knocked a few things onto the floor,” said a woman in Batesville.

Scientists at Purdue University attribute the sound to an “air burst” caused by a meteor. So far, there is no video evidence to back up the theory.

“Essentially when a meteor is entering the atmosphere it will essentially explode in the atmosphere and they can make a loud boom,” Purdue planetary scientist Brandon Johnson told WXIN.

The blast was shown on seismic scales at Indiana University, geophysics professor Michael Hamburger told WXIN.

Mike Hankey with the American Meteor Society believes the sound was from a fireball meteor or a bolidie, the latter being a “light emitted from an exploding meteoroid and asteroid in the sky,” WRTV reported.

Johnson added to WISH it is “pretty uncommon” for an air blast “to make a loud explosion-type sound.”

“I would think something like a big boulder, not the size of a school bus, but maybe the smallest car you have ever seen,” he said in describing how large the meteor likely was.

This story was originally published April 1, 2022 at 8:34 AM with the headline "Meteor explosion may have caused mysterious loud boom heard throughout Indiana."