- Meteor enters atmosphere over Ohio, creates fireball on March 17.
- Object disintegrates near Lake Erie, causing sonic booms regionally.
- NASA confirms meteorites fell, with Medina County as impact zone.
- No injuries reported; FAA briefly halted flights in Cleveland.
On the morning of St Patrick day a meteor weighing seven tons flew through cloudless skies in the state of Ohio, and Pennsylvania and caused an spectacular fireball that was felt halfway down to Virginia and Ontario as resulting in a tidy conference of 911 calls predicting an earthquake by the locals. This took place around 9am eastern time and surprised commuters, dashcams and security cameras of the region.
The space rock was a small asteroid of about 1.8 m diameter and landed in the atmosphere of earth over Lake Erie at a speed of about 45,000 miles per hour before disintegrating in the northeast of Ohio. The fragmentation gave off the energy of an average of 250 tons of TNT, causing the ripple of egregious shaking booms that felt windows and activated car alarms throughout the Cleveland and Pittsburgh regions.
Meteorites Witnessed on the Ground
The NASA senior executives confirmed that the fragments created meteorites that fell to the earth with Medina County in northeast Ohio cited to be the major fall zone. The discovery led to an instant meteorite rush, the amateurs and geology amateurs falling into Arnoldoslav County rural restroads and fields. Witnessed falls are meteorites that have scientific values since they can be collected within a short duration before they are contaminated.
There were also over 140 eyewitness accounts given to American Meteor Society across 10 states such as Illinois, Kentucky, New York and Virginia, and Washington DC and the Ontario province in Canada.
In the footage shot by X on X dashcam which was posted by the Pittsburgh office of the National Weather Service, a fireball with a long bright tail is seen floating over a cloudless sky by one of the employees itself. Cleveland NWS office verified the occurrence through the satellite imagery of GOES-19 of NOAA Geostationary Lightning Mapper.
The eyewitnesses reported that the fireball could be seen in broad daylight, which was not typical. Fireballs are characterized to be meteors that shine as brightly or brighter than the Venus, which is the third brightest body, in the entire sky.
Fire balls such as this during the daytime are infrequent but not unheard of. A 2013 event over Russia that injured over 1,500 people with its sonic boom when the windows in the area were shattered, referred to as the Chelyabinsk event, was estimated to have 65 feet in diameter, which is far bigger than the visitor on Tuesday. In Ohio, there were no such injuries; Pennsylvania had not reported a single one.
Also Read: Now Birds Prefer Cigarette Butts In Nests To Reduce Parasites, Study Finds [WATCH]
This incident created a major wave on social media, with several dashcross and bus garage security camera footage spreading on social media within hours. As part of the response, the mayor of Cleveland, Justin Bibb, declared that there was no infrastructure damage and not to panic. Federal Aviation Administration decided to issue a ground stop temporarily at the Cleveland Hopkins international airport as a precautionary action and lifted it approximately 20 minutes after the event.
