Saturday, March 05, 2016

Sad news for Joe's Pond Community

I learned this morning of the death of another of our Joe's Pond family - Patty Ribolini.  Patty died on Thursday, March 3rd at her home in Middlesex.  Patty and her husband, Stephen, have had a cottage on Point Comfort Road for many years and loved being here at the pond.  She was such a happy and energetic person, it is hard to accept that she will no longer be with us.  Our deepest sympathy goes to Steve and the family.  Condolences may be sent to:  Stephen Ribolini, 56 Upper Sunnybrook Rd., Montpelier VT 05602.

There is no real explanation for that big boom we heard last night.  There was a short piece on WCAX this morning and apparently because people near Joe's Pond reported it, there was some discussion of whether it might have been an "ice boom."  Those of us who are familiar with the pond in winter know that what we heard last night was way louder than anything the ice produces in the way of winter sounds.  Weatherman Nick Borelli's best guess was a sonic boom.

I've heard from a few people in our area who heard it, and there were two comments (read at the bottom of last night's post) from people living in Glover who were also jolted by it.  We have had guesses of all kinds of possibilities such as the cell tower at the farm on Cabot Plain exploding (do they do that?), some kind of big vehicle accident/explosion on Route 2, a transformer on the power line exploding, or a meth lab somewhere nobody knew about blowing up.  I still go with a sonic boom.  It surely disturbed the quiet we are accustomed to on deeply cold winter nights like last night.

We heard a lot about the phenomenon of sonic boom back in the 1960s and 70s, and occasionally heard those thunderous booms even here in Vermont, away from flight testing areas.  Over time, our memory has dimmed about that as well as other events - we can call it an age thing; however, apparently there was good cause for banning aircraft at certain speeds and altitudes.  I found this study of sonic booms done about the noise and damage caused during testing some of you may find interesting. 

 

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