It felt and sounded like something hit the roof, the whole house shuttering in its wake, followed a few moments later by another, equally loud bang and rattle. A sonic boom? Maybe… but I’ve never heard one here before.
I’m in South Seattle, on the western edge of the Seward Park neighborhood. Anybody else hear/feel it, and if so, any idea what it was?
UPDATE:
Unconfirmed report that it was a couple F-15’s going supersonic. Um… but why? I mean, we always have a bunch of military aircraft in the area, but we only rarely have U.S. President. Any connection?
UPDATE, UPDATE:
Latest report, two F-16’s scrambled when somebody violated the airspace over President Obama in Seattle. So there was a connection.
UPDATE, UPDATE, UPDATE:
It was F-15‘s after all. And float plane pilot Lee Daily now has an amusing anecdote to tell over dinner.
felt that in Fife too. Work at the casino and thought something fell on the roof!
I felt it in Tacoma and so did my wife in Gig Harbor
Heard it in West Seattle too. Two loud booms.
possible meteor??
Just Me @1,
That’s exactly what I thought at first… a tree on the roof.
Some guys outside on the street said it came from the south… obviously far enough south that you felt it in Fife.
Yes, I’m on Bainbridge Island and thought a bomb hit my roof! The whole house SHOOK!
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Got it on Cap Hill too….
Nothing here in Bellevue.
Checked the local news sites, and nothing reported so far. Unless it was the sound of Washington’s unemployment rate dropping to 8.9%.
From the KING TV News site,
heard/felt in Tacoma, friends in fife felt it, olympia heard it also.. aww man whats happenin
Also in Renton
Just for fun, let’s see what media outlet picks it up first (other than Goldy).
Just posted on the seattletimes.com: KING5 is reporting the FAA says explosions heard throughout the Puget Sound area are sonic booms from military aircraft in the area.
Okay looks, like KINGTV had it first (see # 9).
Could this be military aircraft flying CAP (combat air patrol) over the President’s visit? If so, I would wonder why they would ever feel the need to go supersonic.
COOL!
fighter planes just flew over the silverdale area……
@12
HA is a media outlet? LOL…..
So as I wrote in the update, assuming it was military aircraft going supersonic… why? We always have a bunch of military aircraft in the area, but only rarely a U.S. President. So why the need to go supersonic or a populated area?
# 17: Looks like he broke the story first, to those of us who hadn’t heard the boom.
As per my update, the latest report is that two F-16’s scrambled when somebody violated the airspace over President Obama in Seattle. So there was a connection.
These are virtually identical military jets to the ones you leftys despise and whine about when they demonstrate incredibly disciplined, precision performance capabilities at Seafair. (F-16s / F-A 18s) So I guess now you think they’re cool because they’re protecting your joke of a president?
If this had happened when Pres. Bush visited Seattle you’d be howling for sure.
NWCN is now reporting that the two jets were FA-18s which means the scrambled jets are EXACTLY the same as the Blue Angels.
How ’bout it leftys? Still despise the military?? Hmmmmm???
The AP just reported that some ANG F-16s were scrambled from Portland, OR to ‘save’ Obama. His airspace had been violated. Problems with this are 1) Why ANG out of Portland-this is WA airspace, 2) What was bugging our current Pres that could bug out, creating a sonic boom, 3) Why is the Pres bothering to come to WA for the loser Patty Murray, 4) is Obama or Murray going to pay for all the broken windows in the Seattle area out of their own pockets, and 5)who is going to rescue my violated rights from left wing commy power hungry politicians?
@21: You poor clingy, pathetic wingnut!
Must really suck to be you to have so little to do or offer that you make shit up on a blog to be wacked off about!
Fair Warning: sticking strawmen up your nose will make people laugh at you and point out that you’re stoooopid!
Only when certain elements of the military violate their sacred oath.
99 percent of the “despising” in general is reserved for right wing hypocrites.
@24 – Which part was ‘made up’? You KNOW if this had happened in 2004 or 2006 when President Bush visited, the HA whining would be deafening.
# 21: I’ve got no problem with military jets, or with the Blue Angels performing at Seafair. I even love the smell of JP1 in the morning!
And nothing beats the sound of a Wright Cyclone radial engine on an old Warbird being revved up to full throttle!
I also don’t have any problem with a CAP flying over our President, whomever he may be.
So quite making assumptions, and relying on strawmen, it doesn’t fit here.
(I am wondering if SEATAC flights are being positioned for takeoffs and landings to the South during the President’s visit).
See, now it’s # 23 complaining about the jets. It’s okay for him if they are protecting Bush at a fundraiser in Bellevue, but not okay if it’s protecting Obama in Seattle?
I thought it was the reaction to DEMOCRAT BLAGO being only found guilty on 1 of 24 counts with a Mistrial on the other 23!!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38.....?GT1=43001
That was the sound of freedom A$$hats!
At first I wondered if the “slow moving earthquake” hit something interesting on its travels
@30 No, it was the sound of a couple of sonic booms, you dumbfuck KLOWN.
I am hearing them to be F-15s out of PDX.
@30, I’m sure the people of Iraq and Afghanistan enjoy that same “sound of freedom” all the time. I’m just glad the military and some of the cops are available to protect Obama and the rest of us sane people from all you Glenn Beck listeners.
re 30 — Au contraire, proctology breath, a mosque at ground zero is the sound of freedom. If you disagree, then you agree with Osama bin Laden
Okay, the sonic booms make sense, if it’s CAP flying out of Portland and responding to some resticted airspace incursion. They would be trying to intercept at soon as possible – probably hitting Mach 1 soon after takeoff with afterburners employed, which would create a continuous path of a sonic boom until they drop below Mach 1 somewhere near their interception point.
@21
I love the Blue Angels. But today’s flights were doing something useful, maybe even necessary national security.
The Blue Angels are a PR display for the Navy. Those folks screaming about gu’bment waste are slack jawed over a couple hundred thousand to study the medical effects of Pot but a couple hundred million in transport, training, logistics and fuel for the Navy’s P.R. – OKELY DOKELY! (It’s the hypocrisy stupid!)
These are the same folks who feel it is our patriotic duty to support every budget request the Pentagon makes. But school districts and municipal gub’ment, well they just have to make some tough choices. (It’s the Hypocrisy stupid!) Hey, that Army Nascar team….that’s a necessary expense, right?
Want to see my video with my kids at the end of Boeing field watching the Blue Angels take off a few weeks ago? It was super cool.
The Seattle Times came in late to the story (at 3:05 p.m.), but had some detail.
They reported the jets were F-15’s from the 142nd Oregon Air National Guard wing. The airplane violating the restricted airspace was a seaplane, but Kenmore Air says it wasn’t one of theirs, they shut down operations completly during the President’s visit.
I’ll just go ahead and say it. I work in a building downtown (you know, where some of the President’s appearances are taking place) and my first thought was that it was a coordinated multiple bomb assasination attempt by domestic right wing terrorists.
I’m not joking. That’s how strong the We-Hate-America-If-We-Can’t-Be-In-Charge rhetoric has grown over the past couple years.
@39
paranoid much?
The use of F-15’s makes sense. They are the last of the Air Force dedicated air-superiority fighters. The newer jets like the F-22 have compromises in order to have stealth capability (but it’s still a great airplane).
Navy planes, such as the F-18, have their own compromises to make them carrier-capable (beefed-up landing gear, etc.). But they are also beautiful airplanes.
But this may well be the end of an era. The Air Force has indefinately postponed production of any more F-22’s. Instead, it is looking at more pilotless aircraft for both recon and weapons-delivery capability. Our next generation of pilots may well be operating joysticks in some room at a stateside Air Force Base.
It’s rather sad, much like the conversion from propellers to jets, or from sailing ships to steamships. In such instances the conversion to the new technology usually takes place just at the height of the old technology. That’s why I love the look and handling of P51 Mustang or Supermarine Spitfire, or the shear power and ruggedness of a P-47 Thunderbolt. They came at the apex of propeller-driven technology and had their own beauty and grace. In ships, the Yankee Clippers, when in full sail, were beautiful and fast, but the much uglier steamships had larger cargo capacities, less limitations, and needed smaller and less-well-trained crews.
Today’s fighter pilots have more in common with the knights of the middle ages than the average soldier of today. But just as armored knights passed into obsolescence with the perfection of muskets, today’s pilots may be the last of their breed.
You know you must be doing alright when the big news of the day is a big boom.
We heard them all the time when I was a kid, so I just figured the booms were fighter jets.
“If you disagree, then you agree with Osama bin Laden”
Bin Laden doesn’t ring any bells these days with wingnuts.
From the wingnut blog, Right Wing News.
With John Wilks Booth in there I thought maybe I’d at least see Lee Harvey Oswald or Sirhan Sirhan on the list, but since they killed a couple of Kennedys, I take it that wingnuts are cool with that.
You don’t really think the Teahadists can act in a coordinated fashion, do you?
@43
Wow, Emperor Horohito (not American I know, but effect on American History?)
Warren Harding? Who’s he?
Nice to know that Al Gore is somehow more dangerous than John Wayne Gacy.
What’s Dave Reichert going to campaign on now, his capture of one of America’s totally unknown bad guys?
I bet if you asked the same people, “Who is William J. Simmons?” at least a 3rd would say, isn’t he that ‘sweatin’ to the oldies’ homo?
Wonder why they had to send jets from Oregon. Couldn’t they send any from McChord or Whidbey? I guess the planes out of Oregon had specialized equipment to deal with these situations, but I would have thought that our military should be able to handle any threat from any of our local bases.
I saw AF1 come in over South Center all by itself, was surprised because I thought it flew with military escorts.
All,
Portland planes are on alert as part of Homland Security as part of their basic mission. CAPs are not flown supersonic. A cap is flown at a nice fuel conserving subsonic speed. F-15 has to use afterburners for supersonic flight.
@43 Steve
who else is missing?
Robert E Lee
Jeff Davis
Bernie Madoff
Dick Chaney
Henry Ford (publisher of Elders of Zion)
George Wallace
Sean Hannity
WR Hearst
Herbert Hoover
Andrew Jackson
Joseph Kennedy Sr.
Lindberg (Nazi)
Father Coughlin
George Custer
Colonel James Forsyth (Wounded Knee Massacre)
GW Bush
Cotton Mather
Sarah Palin
William Jennings Bryant
Jim Clark (Selma, Ala)
Lee Attwater
Murdoch
Rush Limbaugh
……………………………………………………………………………………………………….
@45
Nah, he’s the guy from Kiss with the really big toung
39. Poster Child spews:
you are a parnoid idiot!
You deserve the sleepless nights you give yourself worrying about shit over which you have zero control and has close to 0% chance of happening.
If you think your paranoia will help take the focus off ObaMao’s miserable performance, think again.
Steve
Where’d you get that list? That list provides truly frightening insight into the wingnut mind. As if we needed further proof, given what we see here everyday, of how delusional these people are.
@51: I shudder to go there, but it’s been out a few days now. A group of wingnut bloggers voted and ranked the list.
The wingnut mind is infantile and closed.
If you still feel the need, go here:
http://rightwingnews.com/2010/.....n-history/
I was amazed to hear the sonic booms here in Olympia today. Brought back memories from my youth in the 60’s when Chuck Yeager and the crew were testing and flying out of Edwards AFB! It truly meant exploration then.
Today’s event is remarkable in that it was the result of an incident…actual Defense done correctly. The pilot who left Chelan and flew to Lake Union most likely DID know the TFR/NOTAM was in place, but chose to chance it. (I’m just a student pilot, and I received an email from the FAA yesterday BEFORE the media even announced Obama’s schedule.)
I say the DEFENSE worked correctly because it took an incident to activate the system. (Had the defense worked correctly on 9/11, do you think 3-4 jetliners could stray off their intended course without a similar response?)
The correct actions of the defense in today’s case contrasts sharply to previous POTUS visits when Bush was around….the F-15’s roared constantly from McChord AFB the entire time Bush was in town. No threats, just a lot of saber rattling.
I’d much rather have today’s experience. I can live with a sonic boom if the mission is truly necessary.
Thanks, Zotz. This country is really in trouble. If the Teabaggers take over, we’ll be Third World status within a decade.
It’s so weird that Carter is at the top of the list while the Clenis is near the bottom.
Tim McVeigh is more despised than Bubba.
I guess Timmeh acted on his right wing convictions. In the right wing world you fantasize about those things but never act them out – and if you do, you’re not supposed to get caught.
That sinks the right wing cause every time.
@55
We’d go down in way less than a decade.
Felt it here in Steilacoom, thought it was some crazy Ft. Lewis training. Usually the training rounds don’t feel like they are in my backyard!
@55 and 57:
Worse: Useful Idiocracy, wherein those who hold actual power aren’t idiots.
It is abundantly clear that some / enough of the people can be fooled all of the time.
RE 59
“It is abundantly clear that some / enough of the people can be fooled all of the time.”
Well, yes.
Which is why we have Obama, Reid and Pelosi.
We live very near McChord and are old enough to remember when sonic booms were regular events. We knew why our house shook–just not why jets were racing overhead.
@52 “That list provides truly frightening insight into the wingnut mind.”
They don’t appear to think the way we do. It’s like they’re either stoking the hate, or having their hate stoked.
“I guess Timmeh acted on his right wing convictions. In the right wing world you fantasize about those things but never act them out – and if you do, you’re not supposed to get caught.”
Even if a Republican gets caught, he or she has a 99.9999% chance of not making their list. For instance, there’s not a single representative from the perv wing of the Republican party, and there’s so many to choose from.
http://www.republicanoffenders.com/Pedophiles.html
62 – As the crazy right wing nut law professor from TN would say:
Heh. Indeed..
felt it in medina at rob glazer’s house. all the billionaires gave obama another $20k out of their wallets just so he’d make it stop.
Why does Obama need Air Force One? I thought all you folks thought he could fly on his own power while parting the waters and feeding the 5000.
I should add you never act them out except in remote places against people with funny names with big guns.
“I thought all you folks thought he could fly on his own power while parting the waters and feeding the 5000.”
It looks like you thought wrong. Again. Of course, that’s what happens when all you can do is make shit up.