All shook up in Naples
Wow, what was that? Ruth and I were both working in our respective offices on Wednesday when the doors started to shake like someone had a hold of the door knob and was just shaking to get in. She said “it wasn’t me”, I said “it wasn’t me”. That was weird. Lasted for about 15 seconds. Actually I thought maybe it was a large pelican that landed on the roof above us and just started flapping its wings against the shingles.
Time to hit the internet. The Naples Daily News first reported it was an earthquake and then retracted it. No one knew for sure, but it was obviously “felt” all over town. The comments to the original article in the paper was filled with reports of people’s experiences. No one, however, reported hearing a “boom” or any noise associated with the shaking.
Several media inquiries were made to government departments. Seismologists reported three small eathquakes off Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic near the time of the local reports. The Miami National Weather Service said meteorologists were uncertain of the cause, but reports out of the Key West Naval Air Station referenced serveral supersonic aircraft in the area on Wednesday morning. The weather recently has been calm, dry and cool. Officials said that it was possible for sound waves to travel that far under those conditions. It was reported that one Air Force F-16 broke the sound barrier during training.
Geophysicists at the U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colorado believed that whatever caused the shaking most likely was not an earthquake.
James Brown passing through? Just a thought. The verdict is still out, but there are a whole lot of people in Naples that were all shook up!