IT wasn’t a bird, it wasn’t asteroids and it definitely wasn’t a plane.
At around 5pm yesterday afternoon, the Zululand Observer was notified by a Veldenvlei resident of a loud ‘rumbling and banging’ noise.
As the cause could not be immediately determined, a post on the ZO Facebook page was published, asking residents if they had heard the noise, and if they knew what had caused it.
More than 90 comments later, and some pictures of jet trails (trail left by jet as it passes over), the mystery deepened.
Meteor shower?
Michele Nel shared an iflscience.com post about the Delta Aquarid Meteor Shower, saying it could be related.
A quick sojourn into the Google machine revealed the shower had ended at 7am on Wednesday morning.
Earthquake?
Following a 3.4 magnitude quake on 16 June, this journalist could definitely see the possibility of the incident being tremor related.
Once again a quick check of the earthquaketrack.com website calmed tremor fears.
Plane?
One of the more prevalent theories was that a jet plane had flown over, and the noise was caused by the subsequent sonic boom caused by the speed of the plane.
Pictures of the jet trail supported this theory, and a query was logged with the SA Airforce.
Head of Communications for the Department of Defense, Siphiwe Dlamini, confirmed that the Airforce had no planes in the area yesterday, making the ‘sonic boom’ theory moot.
When all these avenues had been explored, the obvious answer presented itself.
Blasting
Lafarge Aggregates confirmed telephonically that they had in fact conducted blasting yesterday afternoon.
Noting that the ‘bang’ was heard as far as Veldenvlei this explanation, although believable, still leaves some room for doubt.
Do you have any other theories? Leave your comments below!
