Meteor rocked our world tonight.

[KPKicker]

About 10:10pm CDT, my wife and I heard this incredible BOOM! It was like thunder, but much louder. It even shook the house a little. And the echo lasted for at least a minute.

I come to find out that a big meteor rattled a lot of nerves across the country tonight. From Ohio, to Missouri, to Wisconsin people so a bright flash and heard a big boom.

This is one of our last nights in Wisconsin. I guess the cosmos wanted to give us a going away gift....LOL

 

[Sherrick]

Isn't there usually some kind of meteorological warning when this is going to happen? I'm in Ohio right now, and saw nothing. I talked to my uncle tonight - he lives in Waukesha, WI - and he went on and on about this. So strange that something so big would come unannounced! Or maybe I was just unaware that it was coming....

 

[NCC]

Isn't there usually some kind of meteorological warning when this is going to happen? I'm in Ohio right now, and saw nothing. I talked to my uncle tonight - he lives in Waukesha, WI - and he went on and on about this. So strange that something so big would come unannounced! Or maybe I was just unaware that it was coming....

I saw this fireball mentioned on another forum tonight.

Now I know why I stayed up

Just saw a Meteor

Lit up the sky just to my West North West heading south and broke up just West of me.

First it was A Big Bright Blue ball, dimmed a bit then broke up into several smaller orange pieces streaking across the sky.

Oh, and no, forecasting the entry of a large meteor, or fireball, into the Earth's atmosphere is not (at this time) any more predictable than forecasting Earthquakes (most likely, less). How would you imagine it would be forecastable?

I'm jealous of those who got to see it. I hope it was caught on video by someone.

 

[Sherrick]

How would you imagine it would be forecastable?

I imagined it was at least somewhat forecastable because several times each summer I am told by local meteorologists to go watch the night skies because a meteor shower is expected. Made sense to me....

 

[NCC]

Those meteor showers, such as the Perseids, are known because they happen each year when the Earth passes through the debris trail left by the passing of a comet. They occur at the same time each year. Large meteors, such as this one are usually loners and are not predictable.

The scary thing is that 'we' could be blindsided by an object large enough to be catastrophic.

 

[Sherrick]

Oh, I thought from what I was reading elsewhere that this would have been part of the Gamma Virginids that were expected, and have been tracked since the late 1800's.

 

[NCC]

It might well have been part of the Gamma Virginids, you're right about that. Still, the vast majority of the meteors are much smaller and don't provoke calls to the police, nor posts on forums. The big ones are fairly rare, but far from unheard of. I sure wish I'd seen it.
YouTube - meteor turns night to day
For what it's worth ... the shower continues for a few more days. Hey, hey, maybe there will be more fireballs? Just hope nothing is big enough to survive to the surface and cause damage.

 

[rfun6]

Probably another dang UFO crashed again. Next to follow ... big cover up, etc. Don't you wish they would learn to drive those things without crashing them. Either that or some more NASA/ satellite garbage falling.

 

[KPKicker]

It's a common misconception that we (meteorologists) study meteors. The word meteorologist come from the Greek word "meteoron" which means "high in the sky". It doesn't mean we study meteors. This myth is only exacerbated by the fact that news directors of TV stations often ask us to cover stuff like meteor showers and other science stuff.

However, most are like me, we stick to studying what originates within the confines of our own atmosphere. Astronomers study meteors and other cosmic stuff.

Having said that, I can tell you that I know that predicting an event like tonight's is far more difficult than forecasting any type of weather event. Sure, astronomers can tell you when meteor showers will happen, when peak viewing times are, etc. But out of those thousands of meteors, it's nearly impossible to say that one will be big enough to cause an event like what happened tonight.

In fact given the danger meteors pose to our planet, the money being given to studying and tracking them is woefully inadequate.

 

[karmatized]

you know i know that meteor in that video was actually small, but it just makes me think, hmmm so that's what the dinosaurs saw before they died.