A meteor exploded Tuesday morning north of Cleveland over Lake Erie, lighting up the sky and drawing hundreds of eyewitness reports. According to the American Meteor Society, the bright meteor was seen from the Eastern Shore of Maryland to Kentucky, as well as across Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, and western New York.
Although the meteor appeared during daylight, it was bright enough to be seen for roughly 5½ seconds. Tens of thousands of people in northern Ohio heard a loud boom, and some even felt the ground shake.
This could have been caused by the meteor’s sonic boom or the sound of its explosion. A seismometer in Lorain County, Ohio, detected subtle ground vibrations at 8:56 a.m.
The American Meteor Society is still reviewing reports to trace the meteor’s path.
Meanwhile, the GOES East weather satellite recorded a flash at 8:56 a.m. Initially logged as a lightning strike, ground-based lightning networks confirmed no thunderstorms were present. Instead, the flash was infrared light from the meteor’s explosion. The satellite orbits 22,234 miles above the Earth.
It is currently unclear how large the meteor was, its exact trajectory, or whether any fragments reached the ground.
Meteor explosions like this are not uncommon. On Jan. 16, 2018, a meteor over Michigan caused ground shaking equivalent to a 1.8-magnitude earthquake, with fragments later recovered and debris visible on weather radar.
Similarly, on June 26, a meteor exploded over Atlanta, creating a lightning-like signal on weather satellites.
