People reported earthquakes and fire in the sky. It was probably a meteor.
People in the southeastern United States on Thursday, June 26, reported a fireball in the sky and rumbling on the ground, an unsettling combination that was probably a meteor, according to various agencies.
Reports of sightings flooded the American Meteor Society around 12:30 p.m. And the National Weather Service in Peachtree City, Georgia, said residents reported what felt like earthquakes around that time.
Bill Cooke, the chief of NASA's Meteoroid Environments Office at the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, told The New York Times and local news outlets that the flying space rock was about three feet in diameter and weighed more than one ton. (The USA TODAY Network left a message with the Marshall Space Flight Center seeking more information.)
And the earthquake reports? Those were likely sonic booms, the brief, thunder-like noises when a spacecraft, aircraft or space rocks travel faster than the speed of sound, the local weather service office said.
The awesome sight likely wasn't entirely harmless: Remnants of the cosmic object may have broken off and plummeted through the roof of a home in Henry County, Georgia, according to the local National Weather Service office.
The weather service, citing the Henry County Emergency Management agency, said a resident south of Atlanta reported that a "rock" fell through their roof, broke through the ceiling and cracked the home's laminate flooring. Because the incident occurred around the time sightings were happening, "we are presuming that a piece of the object fell through their roof."
The fireball that caught the attention of people across the southeastern United States is presumed to be from a meteor fragmenting in the sky, according to meteorologists and other experts.
The American Meteor Society received nearly 150 reports of a meteor bright enough to be seen streaking across the midday sky beginning around noon local time Thursday, June 26.
Most of the reports were from Georgia and South Carolina, but a few witnessed the object in Florida, Alabama, Tennessee and North Carolina.
The National Weather Service office in Charleston said on Facebook that its satellite-based, lightning-detection system showed 'a streak within cloud free sky' over Gasburg, Virginia, near the state's border with North Carolina.
Rocks in space are known as meteoroids. If those space rocks enter Earth's atmosphere, they become meteors that streak across the sky in events colloquially referred to as "shooting stars."
Meteors – or fragments of them – that survive their atmospheric trip and land on the surface without burning up become meteorites, according to NASA.
What many witnessed recently was a very bright meteor known as a fireball. It's relatively rare for fireballs to be sighted on Earth, especially during the daytime, as the objects generally have to be at least as bright as Venus to be visible to the naked eye, according to the American Meteor Society.
Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at elagatta@gannett.com
This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Meteor responsible for earthquake and fireball reports, experts say
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