Calls streamed into 911 dispatchers from across the Southeast on Thursday afternoon with reports that a “ball of fire” was streaking across the sky.
The spectacle blazed a trail against the azure heavens just before 12:30 p.m., leaving a stream of smoke in its wake.
Some people said they saw a blazing fireball. Others heard a loud boom, while some felt the ground shake. People in Peachtree, Ga. called in to the National Weather Service office worried about an earthquake. Drivers posted dashcam videos galore of the fiery flash.
In Georgia’s Henry County, officials investigated reports that fragments of a meteorite had crashed through at least one roof, according to Atlanta’s WXIA. The American Meteor Society’s website was temporarily overwhelmed with reports.
“We’ve received over 200 reports in less than two hours of this event,” American Meteor Society operations manager Mike Hankey told WXIA.
Incoming reports were still being vetted, Hankey said. The AMS had officially logged 142 “fireball reports” from North and South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee, plus at least one from Tallahassee, Fla., by late Thursday afternoon.
NBC meteorologist Bill Karins said a meteor had apparently broken up when it slammed into the atmosphere over South Carolina, according to WRDW. But not knowing what to make of it initially, deputies and first responders in Aiken County spent an hour looking for a plane crash along Interstate 20.
Hankey and other experts said it was an extremely rare bolide fireball. They top 50,000 mph when they first barrel into Earth’s atmosphere, slowing drastically soon afterward.
“By the time they hit your roof, they’re going about the speed of a golf ball or maybe a little bit faster,” he told WXIA. “So, still hundreds of miles an hour, but a far cry from the 50,000 miles an hour. You don’t want to get hit by one.”
