I was scrolling through YouTube when I found a video of the 2020 Beirut explosion. (I wouldn’t have clicked on it had it not been for the fact that it was an angle I hadn’t seen before.) I noticed that as the final ammonium nitrate explosion occurred, the camera was moved and a whoosh was heard before the actual shockwave and boom reached the camera. Shockwaves travels at the speed of sound and this was what was visible as the massive condensation cloud, so what was this force that moved the camera almost as soon as the explosion began?
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When an explosion occurs, it generates multiple forms of energy, including heat, light, sound, and pressure waves. The pressure wave is what creates the shockwave that we see and hear as the explosion propagates through the air.
However, before the pressure wave reaches a camera, it can sometimes be affected by the initial blast wave, which is a high-speed wave of hot gas and debris that is expelled from the explosion site. This blast wave can move quickly and can cause objects, such as cameras, to vibrate or shake. This is what you observed in the video of the Beirut explosion.
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