Mysterious Booms Over Portland, Oregon!

KATU.com Web Staff

PORTLAND, Ore. - The source of those mysterious rumblings over the weekend that caught the attention of so many continues to be a mystery, although there is a focus on a potential answer.

The focus is on F-15s at the Portland Air Base, which KATU News was originally told were on the ground, but we later learned were not.

It turns out a group of F-15s were launched from the Portland International Airport Saturday night as part of three days of intensive training.

Within an hour of their departure, people started hearing things and feeling some rumblings. That is when the 911 calls began.

Even the commander of the F-15 squadron heard the strange noise from his home in Lake Oswego.

The logical explanation seemed to be that the fighter jets set off a sonic boom, but the Air National Guard says it does not make sense that so many people, from Longview to the Oregon coast, would hear the same sonic booms at the same time. A much smaller range of 10 to 20 miles is more likely.

With so many wondering what happened, the Air National Guard is continuing its investigation.

That leaves others to speculate about meteors and to do comparisons with a similar unexplained phenomenon in Florida last year and in Maine just last month.

Others speculate it is a secret government plane, code-named Aurora, which supposedly flies out of Area 51 in Nevada.

For years, unusually intense sonic booms rocked Los Angeles, with many believing it was Aurora passing by at four times the speed of sound.

The Air National Guard says they plan to interview the pilots individually on Wednesday, which may lead to some kind of answer.

Each time an F-15 pilot causes a sonic boom over populated areas, they are required to write a log of the event.