Earthquake Seismologist says no obvious signal of earthquake in Bonnyville, could be a low flying aircraft or meteorite

Earlier this week residents in the Lakeland reported that the ground was shaking.

Lakeland Connect reached out to Dr. John F. Cassidy, Earthquake Seismologist, Project Leader for Assessing Earthquake Geohazards with Natural Resources Canada to find out what caused the reports.

“It’s hard to say there’s no obvious signal that looks like an earthquake,” Dr. John F. Cassidy told Lakeland Connect. “But we do and we’ve had this in the past were jets, low flying jets, from the Cold Lake area. We’ve had reports before that can cause shaking. And the way we generally distinguish between the sort of an earthquake and the jets. The jets fly along, causing the shaking, but often people hear more of a sound or they report windows were vibrating, which would suggest it’s more of an airwave than a ground wave. So one way we distinguish is if people report windows rattling and not so much shaking of the house, but just sort of windows rattling or your walls.”

Dr. Cassidy says the radar station measuring seismic activity in Edmonton didn’t register any report.

Lakeland Connect spoke with a resident of Moose Lake who heard the boom and instantly exited his garage with a plain view of the lake to see if it was a flyby of a jet. There was no jet in the air that he could see.

Dr. Cassidy says that if it wasn’t a jet it could be a meteorite.

“But we’ve or it could be and we’ve had we had a case like this on Vancouver Island, just last month, meteorites that are breaking up as they fly through the atmosphere just like jets,” Dr. Cassidy said. “They’re sort of breaking you know, in this case, the meteorites are breaking up but causing sound waves. They’re sort of little explosions as they come to the atmosphere. We’ve had those before and they’re reported over a large area as shaking events. But again, no earthquake type signal was recorded in Bonnyville.”

Dr. Cassidy studied the comments on our original story and says residents of the Lakeland who reported their experience were very helpful.