Massive meteor explodes over Cleveland, lighting up sky, shaking streets

A 7-ton meteor streaked across the Cleveland sky at a blistering 45,000 miles (72,420 kilometres) per hour, breaking apart in a thunderous explosion that startled residents who feared a major incident.

The bright fireball, visible even at 9 a.m., was reported across multiple states, from Wisconsin to Maryland, according to the American Meteor Society. NASA later confirmed the space rock measured nearly six feet (1.83 meters) in diameter, AP reports.

“This one really does look like it’s a fireball, which means it’s a meteorite — a small asteroid,” said Carl Hergenrother, executive director of the American Meteor Society. “So much stuff is being launched that a lot of times what you see burning up is just reentering satellites. But usually those don’t get especially bright.”

The meteor was first observed about 50 miles above Lake Erie, near Lorain, before traveling more than 34 miles (55 kilometres) through the upper atmosphere and fragmenting over Valley City, north of Medina. NASA’s Bill Cooke, who leads the agency’s Meteoroid Environments Office in Huntsville, Alabama, confirmed the event unleashed an energy equivalent to 250 tons of TNT, creating the audible boom.

Staff at the National Weather Service in Cleveland also reported hearing the explosion and feeling vibrations, though there were no immediate reports of debris. “There could be some small fragments, but a lot of it would have burned up in the atmosphere,” said NWS meteorologist Brian Mitchell.

Meteors of this size typically fall somewhere in the United States about once a day, while smaller space dust enters the atmosphere roughly 10 times an hour, Hergenrother explained. Scientists monitor meteors through a network of cameras, but increasingly, members of the public are capturing them on cellphones and security cameras.

“Now we’re seeing them, and there’s dozens of videos popping up all the time,” Hergenrother said.

By Vafa Guliyeva