Audio engineer offers explanations why Tooele explosive booms rocked Salt Lake County
Sep 19, 2024, 10:19 PM | Updated: 10:23 pm
STOCKTON, Tooele County — While residents in Tooele County are used to the shockwaves from the Tooele Army Depot, the ones heard on Thursday felt a bit different than usual.
Stockton resident Dianna Wiley said she has heard and seen the detonations at the army depot, as the command post is known for disposing of old and unstable munitions from the Department of Defense.
“We just looked out. We knew exactly what it was,” Wiley said. “Just giant plumes of smoke.”
Loud booms heard along Wasatch Front are munitions detonations, pose no threat
Hearing the explosions while at her house early Thursday wasn’t too surprising, but the intensity caught her off guard.
“It shook our house; it felt like an earthquake,” she said.
Normally, these booms only impact residents in Tooele County. Still, they made their way across the mountains and the Great Salt Lake to people in Salt Lake County – making several people nervous about the unexpected rumblings.
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The Tooele Army Depot explained that the weather conditions created an odd situation, resulting in the sound waves of the detonations being heard farther than normal.
“Today’s detonations were propagated further than normal because of the increased moisture in the ground and lack of cloud cover, which amplifies the effects of the detonations,” the depot said in a statement.
While it might sound outlandish that the weather can affect sound waves in that way, Bryan Sansom, a Utah Valley University assistant professor of digital audio, has two theories about what happened.
One theory is that the booms created a pressure wave that reached Salt Lake County.
“At the top of the wave, you’re going to have sound. As you get to where it crosses the zero point of the sine wave, you’re going to have no sound,” Sansom said.
Sansom explaining the pressure wave theory. (KSL TV)
Sansom said the second theory, which is more likely one, is that the booms were amplified because sound travels better in colder than warm weather.
“It creates more particle disruption in the air that won’t allow acoustic energy to travel as easily,” he said.
While Wiley doesn’t totally understand how air molecules made those booms even louder, she understands why people in another county were shocked.
“For people that are not used to it, it is quite the shock,” Wiley said.
