I was dozing off Monday night when a huge boom woke me up. For an instant I assumed it was one of my nodding-off dreams, until Gary said, “WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?”
“Frost boom!” said I.
“Fireworks!” said Gary.
“METEOR STRIKE!” said the Internet.
According to the dozens of Ring doorbell video systems that caught the image, a meteor flamed out about 65 miles to the northwest of my house and 38 miles above, because evidently that’s how low a meteor has to be to earth’s surface to create the boom. I can’t say it landed, because it quite clearly burns up.
It certainly sounded like it landed, but per NASA that’s because at was moving at 33,500 mph, faster than the speed of sound, and created a sonic boom.
NASA called it “Event: 20191112-025148” – and it was only the size of a basketball and it came from “an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.”
It was quite exciting. And, it has spoiled all meteor showers, because they are so quiet and far away.