UPDATE: Sonic Booms Likely Caused By Navy Training, Reports Say

The shaking New Jersey residents experienced Thursday afternoon was caused by a sonic boom generated during U.S. Navy aircraft testing over the Atlantic Ocean, according to several reports.

NBC4 New York reported that officials with the Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland said they were conducting testing of F-35C fighter jet over the Atlantic Ocean Thursday afternoon and that some of the aircraft performed maneuvers that could have caused sonic booms.

The United States Geological Survey said the sonic boom was recorded near Hammonton, N.J. - about a half-hour south of Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst.

The booms caused rattling and shaking felt from southern New Jersey all the way to Long Island and southern Connecticut, prompting hundreds of residents to call 9-1-1 and thousands of tweets on Twitter about what people believed was an earthquake.

“What we saw was something that was not consistent with an earthquake,” said William Yeck, a geophysicist with the USGS.

The Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst said the base did not hold exercises Thursday.

“We’ve also received reports of ground shaking here in South Jersey. We do not have any aircraft capable of producing a sonic boom and our training ranges are currently clear of operations,” according to a statement from the joint base on Facebook.

The Federal Aviation Administration and the North American Aerospace Defense Command said there were no planes, commercial or military, operating in the area that could have caused a sonic boom.

The USGS, however, says that sonic booms can be felt hundreds of miles away, so it’s possible that planes flying from as far away as Maryland could have caused it -- which the Navy later confirmed.

John Bellini, geophysicist with the USGS, initially said the shaking could have been from an earthquake or a sonic boom from a jet but “I don’t know.”

He said the USGS was investigating to determine what happened.

“We’ve gotten reports all the way from Long Island all the way down to southern New Jersey,” he said.

The booms were first recorded 8 miles south of Jackson, with spikes reported at multiple stations in southern New Jersey.

Karen Wall, a Patch editor who lives in Berkeley, reported feeling a rumbling like ”a large truck passing by on the street, strong enough to rattle the house.” The region had five loud rumbles that finally stopped shortly before 2 p.m.

RELATED: The Anatomy Of A Sonic Boom: What Caused N.J. To Shake?

Police departments reported the developments as they came in.

“We are experiencing some minor seismic activity and we are investigating the same,” according to the Barnegat police.

The Ocean County Sheriff’s Office asked people to not call 911 and that there have been “no reports of military training or an earthquake.”

“We are aware of the ongoing tremors,” the Brigantine Police Department said. “We have no confirmed information as to their origin. Please keep our phone lines open for emergencies.”

Many residents took to Twitter to report the tremors, and asked others if they felt the same.

Here are some of the Twitter reports:

Not everyone was convinced, however.