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A meteor that barreled over Central California on Sunday morning — rattling windows and nerves from Modesto and Groveland, to Placerville and Reno — was roughly the size of a minivan, according to a NASA expert. Bill Cooke, of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office at Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, said this morning the meteor was about 10 feet across and moving at 33,000 mph — slow by meteor standards. He said it exploded near Snelling with the force of 3.8 kilotons of TNT — about a quarter the energy released by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
“It was a big meteor,” he said, noting the soundwaves were picked up by sensors in Ontario, Canada. The 8 a.m. flash and explosion were immediately followed by a shower of phone calls to fire and law enforcement agencies throughout Central California and western Nevada. The Tuolumne County Sheriff’s Office received at least 50 calls Sunday morning from shaken residents, said Sgt. Jeff Wilson. The National Warning System, or NAWAS, a phone-tree warning system connecting law enforcement and other public-safety agencies nationally, had earlier put out a notice regarding the possibility of meteor sightings Saturday and Sunday, the result of the Lyrid meteor shower, according to a Wilson and Sheriff’s Office dispatcher in Tuolumne County. Stefanie Henry, meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Sacramento, said several meteor sightings were reported overnight to CAWAS, the state’s version of NAWAS. Most were from Southern California, she said, adding other bright Lyrid meteor sightings were reported as far away as the Eastern European republic of Hungary. The Lyrid meteor shower is an annual event, and this year’s was particularly vivid, Henry said. In the western U.S., the shower peaked about 5 p.m. Saturday, she said. The meteors are floating space debris left by comet Thatcher, which last passed earth in July 1861. As comets, like Thatcher, pass the Earth in their routes around the sun, they shed ice, dust and pieces of rock. When the Earth makes its annual, 67,000 mph jog around the sun, it collides with the space dross. These meteors typically vaporize when they crash through the Earth’s atmosphere at supersonic speeds — resulting in a bright flash and, in some rare instances, a sonic boom like that of a jet fighter. The Lyrid showers appear in mid-April in a part of the sky near where we view the constellation Lyra — hence the name. Cal Fire communications officer Maryjo Boon, in Calaveras County, said there was no confirmation that anything hit in the Central Sierra, though many people thought something must have. Unsubstantiated reports from observers had part of it hitting Big Hill or Mount Elizabeth in Tuolumne County. Reports of fires in the Big Hill area of Tuolumne County around the same time seemed to spur the rumors, but were confirmed to be property owners’ private burn piles, Boon said. “We received reports of people’s windows rattling and doors coming open,” she added. Sunday afternoon, Capt. Ruth Castro, with the North American Aerospace Defense Command, NORAD, in Colorado Springs, Colo., said federal scientists were investigating reports some debris may have struck near Stateline, Nev., in an area known as the Kingsbury Grade. Cooke couldn’t confirm that this morning. Castro had little other information, as NORAD tracks man-made objects, like planes and missiles, not meteors. Bob Lunsford, of Chula Vista, secretary of the American Meteor Society, reckoned the “fireball” — a big meteor — could have partially survived, as the bang would imply it had remained intact to within five miles of Earth. Most fireballs are visible at 50 miles above Earth. “If you hear a sonic boom or loud explosion, that’s a good indication that some fragments may have reached the ground,” Lunsford told The Associated Press. “We’ll have to get some people to work on it to pinpoint where it broke up and see if anything can be found on the ground.” One witness of Sunday’s meteor flyby in Arnold told The Union Democrat that trees were briefly swept from west to east. Another said she was knocked off her feet. “I was walking down the stairs in the garage when the whatever happened,” said Arnold’s Erin Hudson-Girard. “It knocked me off my feet and was shaking the house,” she said, adding her daughter, Elsie, 2, started crying. “It sounded like it was next door.” Taunya Day Struhs, of Pine Grove, Amador County, was rattled as well. “Our windows vibrated, we were stymied as to what it was. So bizarre,” she said by email. Jasmin Yager, of Salida, who just turned 6, offered a colorful description of the meteor’s bright flash, which she saw while outside playing. “She said she saw a big beautiful bird. It was a red one with lots of rainbows,” said mother, Monica Yager, who didn’t see it. “My husband and I were literally having coffee and doughnuts. ... We were like, ‘Oh, OK honey.’” Scott Bright, of Placerville, said the sound seemed to come from the west, the rumble only mildly approximating the thunderstorms he became accustomed to while living in Florida. “It started to rumble then it built incredible energy… like direct-hit thunderbolt, then staged-rocket sounds across the sky. In 53 seconds, it was gone,” he said. “It was the loudest thing I ever heard. It screamed across the sky… thousands of miles per hour,” he said, adding he called friends in New York to check if they’d seen it. They hadn’t. “We’re lucky it didn’t hit. ... When that happens, you better call the friends you love. I thought we were gone.” |