Residents Near Wayland Report Loud Boom, Shaking

WAYLAND, MA — An unconfirmed seismic event may have struck an area north of Wayland late Wednesday night, according to reports from local residents.

The event happened near 10 p.m. Wednesday, according to the website Volcano Discovery. Residents in north Wayland, Stow, Maynard and Bolton — and even as far as away as Framingham and Harvard — all reported a loud boom and shaking, with one resident reporting a flash in the sky.

"Heard a muffled explosion coming from the East, which is the opposite direction from where sounds of explosions usually come from when Fort Devens is doing training activities," a Stow resident wrote on the website.

"Sounded like an explosion. Did not feel shaking. Very weak shaking," a Wayland resident reported.

A U.S. Geological Survey seismologist said there were no earthquakes detected in the area on Wednesday. The agency tracks all seismic events in the U.S. of any magnitude. However, explosions in the air do not typically trip seismic monitoring stations, according to the USGS.

Wednesday's incident wasn't the only recent mysterious earthquake-like event in the area.

In early October, dozens of people in southern New Hampshire and the Ashburnham area reported hearing an explosion in the sky followed by a shockwave. Experts guessed that it was a sonic boom cause by a meteorite entering the atmosphere at great speed.