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A loud boom reported Wednesday evening in Jacksonville quickly was followed by an increase in chatter as people took to social media to try to track down the source of the noise.<\/p>\n
Jamie Grill\/Getty Images\/Tetra images RF<\/p>\n
A loud boom reported Wednesday evening in Jacksonville quickly was followed by an increase in chatter as people took to social media to try to track the source of the noise.<\/p>\n
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Some, many within a wide radius of Morgan County Fairgrounds in northwest Jacksonville, reported hearing a similar sound more than once over a span of a few days.<\/p>\n
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While there were several guesses about the noise\u2019s origins \u2014 sonic boom, blown electrical transformer, thunder \u2014 among dozens of people reporting having heard it, few solid answers have followed, according to authorities.<\/p>\n
\u201cMortar fireworks usually are the cause of those,\u201d Jacksonville Police\u00a0Lt. Mark Lonergan said. \u201cThis time of year, we\u2019re getting close to the Fourth of July.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jacksonville Police Department was aware of the noise Thursday morning but hadn\u2019t opened a formal investigation,\u00a0Lonergan said, adding a reminder that city ordinance and state law both ban most fireworks, expect for smaller items such as sparklers.<\/p>\n
Only licensed professionals are allowed to put on large fireworks displays in the city and state.<\/p>\n
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July\u2019s proximity led Jacksonville-Morgan County Emergency Management director Phil\u00a0McCarty to second Lonergan\u2019s fireworks theory.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve not been notified of any weather events or anything like that\u201d to account for such a noise, McCarty said, noting it is not an investigative agency.<\/p>\n
McCarty \u201cmay have heard\u201d the noise while he was outside, he said, but it didn\u2019t trigger any alarm bells for him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think there have been any calls for service or damage,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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That almost certainly rules out a weather phenomenon as the origin for the sound, said John Bumgardner, meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Lincoln.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t think of any (weather) phenomenon\u201d that would cause a sound like the reported boom or explosion,\u00a0Bumgardner said.<\/p>\n
\u201cA microburst is not actually an explosion,\u201d Bumgardner said. \u201cIt usually doesn\u2019t cause a boom sound \u2014 unless it does damage, like something crashing. If nobody\u2019s seen anything, that\u2019s probably not it.\u201d<\/p>\n
If city ordinance and state law aren\u2019t enough to stop people from setting off fireworks as part of Fourth of July celebrations, the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association suggests protecting your hearing when doing so.<\/p>\n
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\u201cFireworks and firecrackers can register 150 decibels at 3 feet away \u2014 well beyond the safe listening volume of 75-80 decibels,\u201d according to the association. \u201cNoise at this level can cause permanent damage in less than 1 second.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wearing foam earplugs can dampen noise to a safe level for most adults and teens, according to the association.<\/p>\n
Other tips include heeding noise warnings on smartphones and\u00a0smartwatches, taking listening breaks by periodically removing yourself from noisy places, and listening to your body by leaving if you experience pain, ringing in your ears or hearing changes. Problems that persist the next day should be checked by an audiologist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A loud boom reported Wednesday evening in Jacksonville quickly was followed by an increase in chatter as people…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304281,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[4613,116,118,117,115,4614,278],"class_list":["post-304280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-breakingnews","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-news","tag-pubnow","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304280\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}