Why It's Easy to Become Rattled in 2021 after the Year of 2020

So what was it that rattled windows last evening in San Diego County?

A lot of people reported feeling it about 5 p.m. with comments on social media like this one from someone in Fallbrook who posted, "It was weird the ground didn’t move like an earthquake but my windows did."

We and others in the news businesses checked it out with the people who know about these things, the folks at the U.S. Geological Survey, but they said it wasn’t an earthquake but suggested it might have been a sonic boom.

And it wouldn’t be surprising if that’s what it was. After all, living in a community with the Miramar Marine Air base and the Coronado Naval base, with high-speed fighter jets in the far skies above and beyond, it has happened.

Also not surprising, especially these days, is that a rattling of windows on a Tuesday evening would rattle a lot of people. Because these days, and for many days now dating back one year ago to the beginning of the pandemic, watching the news can rattle us.

From the once in a life time winter storm in Texas where people from cold states move to get away from the cold…to having just watched the unprecedented second impeachment of a trial of a U.S. president about a never-before kind of attack by Americans on the building that symbolizes America’s democracy, to the nightly tally of deaths from COVID-19 and the struggles kids and parents are going through with most schools still shut down.

That's why it's easy to get rattled when you already are on edge. And so far, 2021, has been looking like a 2.0 version of 2020.

(Photo Getty Images)