Peabody 'Explosions' Remain Mystery 2 Months Later

PEABODY, MA — The reports came in one after the other on social media around noon on Feb. 23 when Peabody residents near the Salem line said they heard and felt two booms so furious it felt like explosions within their own homes.

Peabody fire and police investigated the reports — even sending out drones and trained K9 units the next day in hopes of finding a source for the blasts that some residents claimed caused cracks in their ceilings.

But, despite exhausting research of similar incidents across the country and consulting a Salem State University team that studies weather-related phenomenon, police said they never determined a firm reason for blasts and have concluded they were most likely a "naturally occurring incident."

"We contacted the team at Salem State that looks at weather and atmospheric conditions and they couldn't provide any explanation of what it was," Peabody Police Capt. Dennis Bonaiuto told Patch on Monday. "We reached out to a community that had a similar thing happen in another part of the country and they couldn't figure it out in that situation either other than it may have been a weather-related sort of thing with air coming from cold to warm and back to cold again.

"But no one could say for sure what it was."

Peabody Fire Prevention said there was no scheduled blasting in the city the day of the booms.

Police said at the time the noises appear to have originated in the area of Goodwin Circle to downtown Peabody.

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(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)

More Patch Coverage: Peabody Police Use Drones, K9 Units To Investigate 'Explosions'

2 Explosions Reported In Peabody, Fire Officials Say