Explosion, fireball reported in Nevada, California

MARTIN GRIFFITH

Asso­ci­ated Press

RENO, Nev. — A loud explo­sion heard across much of Nevada and Cal­i­for­nia on Sun­day morn­ing rat­tled homes and prompted a flood of calls to law enforce­ment agen­cies on both sides of the Sierra Nevada, some report­ing fire­ball sightings.

The sound and the light show were likely caused by a meteor that entered Earth’s atmos­phere, astronomers said.

“It made the shades in my room shake hard enough to slam into the win­dow a cou­ple times,” said Nicole Carlsen of the Reno area. “I kept look­ing for earth­quake infor­ma­tion, but (there was) noth­ing. I even checked the front of my house to make sure no one ran into the garage. I wish I had seen the meteor.”

Erin Girard-Hudson of Arnold, Calif., told The Union Demo­c­rat of Sonora, Calif., that the loud boom that occurred around 8 a.m. made her 2-year-old daugh­ter, Elsie, cry.

“It knocked me off my feet and was shak­ing the house,” she said. “It sounded like it was next door.”

No dam­ages or injuries were imme­di­ately reported. There were no reports of earth­quakes at the time.

Some peo­ple reported see­ing a bril­liant light streak across the sky at the same time. Sight­ings occurred over roughly a 600-mile line across the two states, includ­ing Reno, Elko and North Las Vegas in Nevada, and the San Fran­cisco, Sacra­mento and Bak­ers­field areas in California.

Astronomers said they believe the mys­te­ri­ous light was a fire­ball, which is a very bright meteor. It will take time to deter­mine the path of the fire­ball and where it broke up, they added.

“From the reports, I have no doubt it was a fire­ball,” said Robert Lunsford of the Gene­seo, N.Y.-based Amer­i­can Meteor Soci­ety. “It hap­pens all the time, but most are in day­time and are missed. This one was extra­or­di­nar­ily bright in the daylight.”

Lunsford said it’s “pretty rare” for fire­balls to pro­duce a loud explo­sion. For that to hap­pen, he explained, the meteor must have sur­vived intact until break­ing up about five miles above 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.”

Lunsford said more than 20 peo­ple in the two states had filed reports with his group by mid­morn­ing about see­ing the fireball.

“I have been look­ing at the sky for 30 years, and I have never wit­nessed some­thing so amaz­ing and puz­zling. It is an event that makes you glad to be alive,” said Matthew Neal of San Fran­cisco. “The main body was bright green and the head was bright red and white.”

Greg Giroux of June Lake, Calif., located along the east­ern Sierra just west of Yosemite National Park, also was impressed.

“This was by far the bright­est fireball/shooting star I’ve ever seen, espe­cially since it was in full sun­light,” he said. “After the flash, it broke up into pieces, then I lost sight of it as it went behind a mountain.”

In Nevada, the light show was seen as far east as Elko, about 300 miles east of Reno, and as far south as the Las Vegas area.

Mar­cia Stan­difer of Spring Creek, near Elko, and her hus­band were out drink­ing cof­fee when they saw the fire­ball at the same time.

“It was a very bright ball of white light, then dim­mer to the hori­zon,” she said. “We thought this was very unusual due to the bright day­light and how vivid the object was.”

Tracey Cor­daro of North Las Vegas said the sight­ing “took my breath away.”

“It was amaz­ing,” she said. “It looked as if it was dis­in­te­grat­ing rapidly, but was still quite large when it dis­ap­peared from my view … (It was) bright green, vis­i­ble in the bright sunlight.”

Dan Ruby, asso­ciate direc­tor of the Fleis­chmann Plan­e­tar­ium at the Uni­ver­sity of Nevada, Reno, said it’s unlikely the fire­ball had any­thing to do with the cur­rent peak of the Lyrid meteor shower.

“Peo­ple are putting two and two together and say­ing it has some­thing to do with the meteor shower,” he said. “But the fire­ball was prob­a­bly coin­ci­den­tal and unre­lated to the peak of the meteor shower.”

Though the fire­ball was seen over such a wide area, Ruby said it was likely just “a lit­tle big­ger than a wash­ing machine.”

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