About Boom Tracker

For years, people across the Tri-Cities, WA have reported the same thing: a sudden, window-rattling boom, sometimes with strange lights in the sky. It happens again and again, and no one has a clear answer. The conversation is scattered across Facebook posts and group chats - “did anyone else just hear that?” - and then it fades until the next time.

Boom Tracker is a simple idea: instead of letting each sighting disappear, put them all on one map. When enough people report where they were, when it happened, and which direction it came from, patterns start to emerge that no single post ever could.

How it works

Anyone can file a report in about 20 seconds - no account required. Reports from the same night automatically cluster into a single event. For events where people noted a direction, we triangulate the bearings to estimate a likely origin point. We also overlay official USGS seismic data and local 911 dispatch activity so you can check whether a boom lines up with a real tremor or incident.

A note on accuracy

This is citizen science, not an official source. Reports are crowdsourced and unverified, and new submissions are screened automatically to keep out spam. The triangulated origins are estimates that get sharper as more people contribute. Treat it as a tool for spotting patterns and asking better questions - not as a final answer.

Privacy

You can report completely anonymously. We never store your raw IP address, and photo location metadata is stripped on upload. Creating an account is optional - it just lets you track your own reports and get notified when the next event happens.