News 5 has confirmed that Saturday nights “sonic boom” and streak of fire seen across the Eastern Shore and other places locally, was indeed a meteor shooting across the sky. As seen on Meterologist James Spann’s Facebook Page, Below are the preliminary thoughts coming from Bill Cooke who is the lead of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office located in Huntsville, AL
Took a look at the eyewitness reports – there is a lot of scatter, but I was able to use a software tool developed by a colleague to derive a ground track. The fireball first appeared to the NE of Mobile and moved westerly at about 56,000 miles per hour. The best reports indicate that it broke apart above U.S. 43 north of Mobile, and the reports of sound indicate it probably penetrated fairly low into the atmosphere before fragmenting, perhaps as low as 14 miles altitude. READ MORE
