WACO (April 7, 2009)—The window-rattling explosion that communities on the northern edge of Waco reported late Tuesday morning was evidently a sonic boom from a Lockheed jet.

According to the Naval Air Station in Fort Worth, some kind of Lockheed aircraft was flying above the Central Texas area at the time residents heard the explosion.

Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. in Fort Worth produces the F-16 and F-35 fighters and does assembly work on the F-22 Raptor.

It wasn’t clear which of the jets was flying over.

A sonic boom is the result of the compression of pressure waves created in front and behind of a jet.

At the speed of sound, which is about 760 mph, the waves merge into a single shock wave that produces large amounts of sound energy, much like thunder.

Some residents in the Chalk Bluff area called News 10 late Monday morning to report the boom and Chris Moore, the pastor of Lakeview Baptist Church, e-mailed us, saying he heard a loud boom that shook his house for three or four seconds.

A Twitter user sent us a message describing it as a “small earthquake.”

Another e-mail from a resident off Flat Rock Road near Waco Regional Airport said the boom rattled windows.

Another e-mail said the boom was familiar from the years of the Bush presidency when fighters patrolled the area around the first couple’s ranch near Crawford.

McLennan County sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to the area in response to calls from residents.