A loud, explosion-like noise that was heard across metropolitan Washington on Sunday was caused by a sonic boom from a Department of Defense-authorized flight, officials confirmed.
"The loud boom that was heard across" the Washington area was "caused by an authorized DOD flight," said the Annapolis Office of Emergency Management in Annapolis, Maryland, on Twitter. "This flight caused a sonic boom. That is all the information available at this time."
The Epoch Times has contacted the Pentagon for comment on Sunday.
Another local agency, the District of Columbia Homeland Security and Emergency Management, wrote that it is aware of reports from locals across the Capitol region of a "loud 'boom' this afternoon." It declared that "there is no threat at this time," but provided no other details.
The City of Bowie also reported that the boom was caused by a plane traveling from Joint Base Andrews, a major U.S. military base in Prince George's County, Maryland. "We have confirmed that the loud boom heard in Bowie was a sonic boom from a plane out of Joint Base Andrews," it said.
Data from the U.S. Geological Survey shows that no earthquakes or other seismic activity were reported in the area on Sunday afternoon.
Around the same time, a small plane crashed into a mountainous area in southwestern Virginia, according to federal officials.
"A Cessna Citation crashed into mountainous terrain in a sparsely populated area of southwest Virginia around 3 p.m. local time on June 4," the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said in a statement. "The aircraft took off from Elizabethton Municipal Airport in Elizabethton, Tenn., and was bound for Long Island MacArthur Airport in New York. The FAA and NTSB will investigate. The NTSB will be in charge of the investigation and provide all further updates."
It's not clear if the Cessna crash was connected to the reported sonic boom. Tracking website FlightAware showed that an aircraft registered as N611VG took off from the Tennessee airport and flew over New York, New Jersey, and is then shown descending into the mountainous area.
Reports Come In
On social media, however, people expressed alarm about the noise, while local media reports say that phones have received numerous reports of "people saying they heard a boom a few minutes ago felt across a wide area." In response, several people posted clips that appear to feature the noise.Elsewhere on Twitter, a significant number of users wrote that they heard or felt the boom.
