A Skeptical Survivalist

This report from several years ago (March 2009) has 2 large fireballs in the atmosphere over the East Coast at almost the same time of year - coincidence, but still very curious. Feb 2011 has similar stories on the East Coast here and missing the Earth here.  It appears that it’s not uncommon over the East Coast or to have large fireballs hitting the states at the same time.

The past 10 days have seen 2 extremely bright fireballs over the East Coast of the US. Both fireballs also were accompanied by loud sonic booms.

The latest meteor occurred on Sunday night, March 29, at ~9:50 EDT. Observed from Pennsylvania to North Carolina, the fireball seems to have ended over the Norfolk/Virginia Beach area of southeast Virginia. A loud noise similar to an aircraft sonic boom or distant thunder was heard and felt ~2 minutes after the fireball last disrupted.

• “Egg Harbor, NJ. Silvery ball like ‘shooting star’ for about a second or so across good portion of sky. Heard a bit of a woosh and then it flashed out. Definitely a little intimidating but cool!”
• “I saw the meteor that came down in Philly. Spectacular, bright came Almost straight down. Positioning reported by news inaccurate though.”
• “I saw a meteorite today in Bayonne, New Jersey between noon and 1pm. It appeared out of nowhere in my line of sight coming down toward the shoreline, and disintegrated about 100 feet above the ground in an instant!”
• “Old Bridge, NJ Driving on Route 34- Saw a circular meteor appear with long red flare ending- it was there for a seconds and gone instantly- it glided like a shooting star -1pm in the afternoon- red as can be!!”
• “It fluxed all the colors of the rainbow akin to a … oil sheen on water. It was moving at breakneck speed. … I don’t want to sound weird but it looked magical,” wrote one New York City man.
• “A true spectacle. Top 5 coolest things I have ever … seen. I will remember this fireball till death :) Love, Kurt,” wrote a Unionville, Pa., observer.

1st large Meteor in the past 5 days - Feb 10

(Newser) – An asteroid all but buzzed Earth on Friday, NASA has revealed. The asteroid, known as 2011 CQ1, passed just 3,405 miles above the Earth’s surface as it hung a sharp turn around the planet. That’s the closest near-miss ever recorded, beating a record set by a rock in 2004 by a few hundred miles, notes the New Scientist. The asteroid was just a meter wide, small enough that Earth’s gravity would affect its course, in this case bending its path 60 degrees.

Not that there was any real danger if the asteroid had veered into Earth’s atmosphere. “There is likely to be nearly a billion objects of this size and larger in near-Earth space,” NASA scientists said. “Upon striking the atmosphere, objects of this size create visually impressive fireball events, but only rarely do even a few small fragments reach the ground.”

2nd asteroid in 5 days - Feb 14th, 2011

The reports of this are myriad and interesting to read. Check out the American Meteor Society logs on it.  Scroll down to event 208.

A fireball that streaked through the skies over East Coast which was described by viewers as the size of a “Cesna plane” and one of “the biggest, brightest, and most colorful ever!”, could have been a passing meteor.

Philly.com quoted NASA scientist Bill Cooke of the Marshall Space Flight Center as stating that the object seen might have been 5 feet in diameter and would have weighed more than 5 metric tons, basing the measurements on the reports of the brightness of the object. Cooke also estimates that the object was traveling at a speed of 33,500 m.p.h.

Cooke further estimated that the fireball’s energy was equivalent to about 100 tons of TNT and was capable of producing a crater 125 feet wide and 15 feet deep on impact.