Credit: Unsplash
No, it was not a crashed alien vessel, cool as that would’ve been.
There’s something inherently cool about seeing celestial objects pass by overhead, even if they don’t last very long or do anything especially interesting. I mean, usually when you look into the sky, you just see clouds and planes and stuff, so to see a massive fiery lump of space debris is a departure from the norm if nothing else.
Yesterday, residents of the northeastern United States, as well as a bit of Canada, were treated to such an event when a meteoroid shot across the sky at approximately 47,000 miles per hour. Both NASA Meteor Watch and the American Meteor Society received numerous reports from all over the northeast about the speedy fireball, with a large portion of reports coming from residents of Vermont. According to NASA Meteor Watch, the fireball first became visible about 55 miles above Mount Mansfield State Forest, traveled 33 miles across the state, and then burned up in the atmosphere about 33 miles above the surface.
Eyewitnesses in the northeastern states claimed to have heard a massive boom in the air before seeing the meteoroid streaking across the sky, with some even claiming to have felt its intense heat as it passed them by.
For anyone who was wondering about the big boom / meteor earlier today in #btv #vermont , I dug through some webcam footage and found this on the WCAX / BTV Airport webcam- watch the upper left. pic.twitter.com/oyVLSoVahP
— Jeremy LaClair (@JeremyLaclair) March 8, 2021
“The boom shook my house like an explosion nearby and heard a quick higher pitch [shrieking] sound over head. Sound may have been slightly to the north and traveling from west to east,” Vermont resident Ken Bisceglio said on the NASA Meteor Watch Facebook post.
“Loud rumble. I actually thought my apartment was being knocked off its foundation,” said another Vermont resident, Holly Parish, on the same post.
