Military training likely behind sonic booms felt in SWFL

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FORT MYERS, Fla. Sonic booms that made noise and rattled houses Wednesday in some parts of Southwest Florida are likely the result of military training.

Pilots from MacDill Air Force base in Tampa are going on training runs in the Gulf of Mexico, an Air Force spokesman said. The training isn’t designed to entail travel at or above the speed of sound — the velocity necessary to create a sonic boom — but some pilots may accidentally cross that threshold, according to the spokesman.

MacDill pilots fly their training missions over the Gulf in an area that comes relatively close to the Southwest Florida coast. That zone is outlined in yellow on the map below:

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