A dazzling meteor streaked across the sky in the Northeastern United States on Tuesday morning, shaking buildings and spooking residents in parts of Pennsylvania and Ohio with a fiery streak and a loud boom.
NASA said the fireball was first spotted over Lake Erie just before 9 a.m. Videos posted on social media, including by the National Weather Service, showed a bright streak flashing across the blue sky, visible from Indiana to New York.
The fireball was produced by an asteroid nearly 6 feet in diameter and weighing about 7 tons, according to a statement from Bill Cooke, the lead of NASA’s Meteoroid Environments Office. It moved southeast at 45,000 miles per hour before it fragmented over Valley City, Ohio, southwest of Cleveland. The fragments turned to meteorites in the vicinity of Medina County, Ohio, the agency said.
The asteroid’s fragmentation — which produced energy equivalent to 250 tons of TNT — caused the boom and shaking felt by many on the ground in northern Ohio, NASA said.
The American Meteor Society, which tracks sightings, said it had received 140 reports of meteor sightings from other states Tuesday morning, including Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan and New York, as well as from Ontario, Canada.
Douglas Kahn, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Cleveland, said the service’s geostationary lightning mapper had tracked a big flash that coincided with a boom. Shaking was felt at his office south of Cleveland, as well as around the Lake Erie region, he said in an interview.
“A sonic boom was heard across much of the area,” he said.
Law enforcement authorities said they had been swamped with calls about what sounded like an explosion.
The police department in Avon, Ohio, about 20 miles west of Cleveland, said on social media that it was trying to confirm the source of the reported “explosion that was heard across the city.” It later confirmed that it had been a meteor.
Sgt. Wilfredo Diaz, a spokesman for Cleveland Police, said that residents were calling to ask what was happening but that no one had reported damage or injuries.
Christine Hauser is a Times reporter who writes breaking news stories, features and explainers.
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