Residents of Allentown, Pennsylvania, had some excitement as a series of explosions shook the small city.
However, police advised them not to be concerned, as they were just disposing of a deceased man's pipe bombs.
'The loud boom was from the Allentown Bomb Squad conducting emergency disposal operations on improvised explosive devices [IEDs],' Lt. Chad Ege said.
After one of the city's residents passed away, his friend was gathering some items from his home outside Leigh Valley when he stumbled across the homemade ordnance.
He called a friend in the police department who then contacted the FBI.
'There was no criminal intent,' Ege said. 'They didn't build them. They found these devices and they reached out to someone they knew that worked on these types of issues and they contacted the FBI, which got us involved to take care of these devices.'
No one is certain why the deceased man had the devices in the first place.
'That's left to the FBI,' and the bomb squad is more focused on addressing the potential hazard.
Interesting note here: The atmospheric conditions were just right, so the explosions could be heard in several surrounding towns.
EPAWA meteorologist Bobby Martrich stated the weather was to blame for the sound traveling so far due to a 'significant temperature inversion.'
Temperatures are typically cooler higher up in the atmosphere, but on Wednesday night, temperatures were warmer, Martrich explained, which trapped the sound below the inversion.
'Sound is always trapped under inversion, where it echoes and reverberates, thus traveling farther,' he said.
And so, we've learned two valuable lessons from this story: sound travels farther under the inversion, and don't leave your pipe bombs lying around for your friends and relatives to have to deal with when you die.
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