The cause of lound booms that have shaken houses in and around Port Angeles this week remains a mystery.
Possible explanations range from naval exercises in the Strait of Juan de Fuca to thunderstorms in the Olympic Mountains.
The Canadian Navy confirmed that the HMCS Edmonton was conducting gunnery exercises with a .50-caliber machine gun in the Strait on Thursday, but not any other day of the week, from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. But that wouldn’t explain why people, like Marie Barclay of Port Angeles, had her house shaken by loud booms on Tuesday and Wednesday.
“It was pretty loud, like a sonic boom,” she said.
“All you head was the boom and I didn’t hear an airplane or nothing like that.”
Canadian Navy spokeswoman Lt. Cmdr. Natalie Garcia also said that the gun would sound like a rifle and not an explosion. The sound wouldn’t shake a house on the North Olympic Peninsula, she said.
Garcia said that U.S. Coast Guard Sector Seattle had the joint-naval exercise area about three nautical miles south of Vancouver Island and north of Twin and Pysht reserved from July 24 through Wednesday for gunnery exercises. But a spokeswoman for Coast Guard Sector Seattle said that no such exercises took place this week.
“That’s really bizarre, actually,” said spokeswoman Tara Molle.
“As far as the on the Coast Guard side, for us, we don’t have any training going on up there.”
