Last night at around 2am, many Charlotte residents heard perhaps the loudest ‘boom’ of their lives – the intense sound even shook buildings and knocked many people from their beds.
Charlotte’s Reddit page is being flooded this morning with people talking about the boom;
Some thought it was a sonic boom, others said it was a train explosion, and one person even said the apocalypse is here…
It turns out that last night’s ‘boom’ was not a sonic boom, a train explosion, or your ordinary lightning strike.
According to Charlotte Meteorologist Brad Panovich, the noise everyone heard was an enormous positive lightning strike in a temperature inversion.
“Positive lightning strikes are 10x stronger and last 10x longer than your average negative lightning strikes…but when you have a temperature inversion, this causes them to be much louder…this is the equivalent of letting off a firecracker in a storm drain or an enclosed room – it makes the thunder much louder, but it also makes the sound waves travel much further…”
Did you hear the boom last night?
What were your initial thoughts?