Although it was large enough to be heard and felt for miles, no one was hurt in a Saturday night explosion in rural Powell.

Following the roughly 9:30 p.m. incident, scores of area residents took to Facebook to wonder what happened: A sonic boom? Tannerite? UFOs? The rapture?

Although the Park County Sheriff’s Office heard various rumors about the cause, the information ultimately reported to the office was that the explosion resulted from a homeowner throwing an empty gas can into a bonfire.

With the materials consumed by the fire, authorities “can’t prove anything or what exactly happened,” said Monte McClain, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office, “but it rattled windows from Ralston to Powell.”

Although it may have startled some residents, the bonfire “was in a pit used to burn brush piles already,” McClain said, “so there wasn’t any danger of it spreading.”

The event also paled in comparison to what was seen and heard in central and eastern Wyoming early Monday morning. A bright flash was seen around 2:30 a.m. in places ranging from Casper to Torrington, accompanied by a loud boom. In that case, the cause was determined to be a meteor streaking across the night sky.