‘A big boom’: thousands of people see, hear meteor traveling through the atmosphere

PITTSBURGH — On Tuesday morning, a fireball entered the atmosphere before breaking up, according to scientists with NASA. It traveled faster than the speed of sound and was seen and heard by thousands of people.

NASA described the meteor as a very bright daylight fireball that was first visible above Lake Erie.

Scientists said it was caused by a small asteroid about six feet in diameter that weighed seven tons. It reportedly moved at 45,000 miles per hour before breaking up and producing meteorites in Ohio.

“This is pretty rare. People heard this from Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, New York, parts of Canada, and all over Ohio,” said Diane Turnshek, who works as a lecturer in Carnegie Mellon’s Department of Physics and also as an adjunct assistant professor with the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Pittsburgh.

NOAA satellites detected it in Ohio, capturing the bright flashes of the meteor exploding.

Dashcam video shared with Channel 11 showed the fireball soaring over the Parkway West in Robinson Township. Ruth Hidek and her husband saw it from Route 8 in Shaler Township.

“We both said, ‘Wow! Did you see that? And it was gone. It was just this big streak of white light with a red fireball at the end,” Hidek said.

Turnshek believes the meteor was a bolide, an exceptionally bright fireball that can produce loud sonic booms.

“It was a big boom,” Turnshek said. “People, when they hear something like that, they think something hit something, something fell, something exploded, but everybody hears the boom at slightly different times.”

This isn’t the first time a fireball was spotted in the Pittsburgh skies. On New Year’s Day 2022, calls and emails flooded the Channel 11 newsroom, with many viewers saying the boom shook people’s houses.

“You don’t see that kind of stuff every day, and you just have to be in the right place at the right time,” Hidek said.

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