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Meteor Creates Loud Boom in Eastern United States

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NOAA's GOES-East weather satellite, using its Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM), identified a fireball in the sky over northeastern Ohio. Image: NOAA
NOAA’s GOES-East weather satellite, using its Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM), identified a fireball in the sky over northeastern Ohio. Image: NOAA

An apparent meteor entering the Earth’s atmosphere led to a significant loud boom heard in portions of the eastern United States this morning.  Many residents from Cleveland, Ohio to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania reported not only hearing the loud boom, but saw the meteor streak across the sky this morning. According to NASA, today’s atmospheric excitement was caused by a  7-ton asteroid that was roughly 6 feet in diameter. It  was first spotted about 50 miles above Lake Erie, moving east at about 40,000 miles an hour.

A NOAA satellite detected what appeared to be a lightning strike around 9 am, but there were no thunderstorms in the area. When comparing the timing of the data from the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) to ground observations, it is likely the GOES-East satellite picked-up the fireball associated with the meteor rather than a lightning strike in the thunderstorm-free environment.

 

According to the American Meteor Society which tracks fireball reports, unconfirmed reports were made from Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Michigan for this event as well as Ontario province in Canada.

A meteor, often referred to as a “shooting star”, is a steak of light produced when a space rock, such as a meteoroid, enters the Earth’s atmosphere at high speeds and burns up as it does so. According to NASA, these small fragments from comets or asteroids burn up about 50 miles above the Earth’s surface, typically appearing as flashes of light caused by intense atmospheric heat. Meteoroid, meteor, and meteorite all refer to a the same rock but in different places: a meteoroid is in space, a meteor burns up in the atmosphere, and a meteorite is a remnant, if any, that actually hits the ground.