Police departments and other authorities were rushing to figure out what caused a sonic boom that shook buildings in Massachusetts and Rhode Island on Saturday afternoon after reports of an explosion came in from people throughout New England.
The mystery was soon solved, in part thanks to a driver’s dashcam in Rome, New York, about 40 miles east of Syracuse. In it, a meteor flying across the eastern sky is visible. In fact, it was so visible that it was seen all the way from Montreal to Maine to Delaware, Robert Lunsford of the American Meteor Society told WSYR News.
He reported that the American Meteor Society received hundreds of reports from people who heard a double boom, felt the ground tremble, or saw a fireball. “It was definitely bigger than a normal fireball, about a yard wide,” he said.
NASA shares details on the size of the meteor and where it landed
On Monday, NASA shared new details on the size and path of the meteor. “[We] can confirm a fireball over New England at 2:06 p.m. EDT on Saturday, May 30. The meteor was about 5 feet (1.6 meters) in diameter with a mass of 5.6 metric tons and entered Earth’s atmosphere at roughly 42,000 mph,” NASA wrote on Threads.
“The meteor traveled through the atmosphere from northwest to southeast for 26 miles before breaking up at an altitude of 31 miles and producing a meteorite fall into Cape Cod Bay.
“Based on the latest data, the energy released at breakup is estimated to be equivalent to about 230 tons of TNT, which accounts for the sonic boom.”
“Evidence suggests this fall entered the Earth’s atmosphere at a steep angle and fragmented at relatively high altitude (~50 km) as discerned by the NASA Meteoroid Environment Office at Marshall Space Flight Center,” NASA added in a report. “Radar data predominantly shows larger meteorites ranging from 40g to multiple kilograms. This is unusual for a meteorite fall, where 1-10g meteorites usually predominate. It is not immediately clear why this is, although the stormy weather at the time and place of the fall may have driven the NOAA radars to adjust their sensitivity settings.”
People all over the Northeast saw the meteor
NASA reported that the meteor fell into Cape Cod Bay. Although the weather limited visibility over much of the northeast due to a storm, the agency received over 71 reports of a fireball seen over Ontario and Quebec, Canada, Massachusetts, Delaware, Maryland, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
The U.S. Coast Guard said it is not planning any trips to Cape Cod Bay to try to retrieve the meteor or any pieces of it, according to NBC Boston. Pamela Gardner, a meteorologist for NBC Boston, stated that any pieces of the meteor that landed in Cape Cod Bay would unlikely be found anyway. Because meteors are denser than seawater, it probably sank during the storm, and the salt would quickly break them down. Wave heights during the storm were 5 to 10 feet, and the water depth at the crash site was around 100 feet.