On Saturday morning, around 11:30 AM, residents of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania were startled by a loud booming sound, different from thunder, and felt minor ground tremors. Soon after, the National Weather Service proposed a possible explanation: a meteor had entered the Earth’s atmosphere, disintegrated upon entry, and exploded above Pittsburgh, causing the sound and tremors. While not yet officially confirmed, it is the leading theory.
Mike Hennessy from the Carnegie Science Center mentioned, “There’s an asteroid in our solar system that’s responsible for that and when Earth passes through the debris field shed by that asteroid, we have lots of meteors coming into our atmosphere focusing head outside on the evening of the third early then they might catch some streaks of light so if you fireworks to go with the sonic boom they may have heard today.”
Hennessy further explained, “In this case, it’s possible that we had a fireball that burned up in our atmosphere and exploded. Seismic activity and airport construction were ruled out as causes. The stable weather system also eliminated thunder as a possibility for the event.”
The loud explosion heard over SW PA earlier may have been a meteor explosion. This GOES-16 GLM Total Optical Energy product shows a flash that was not associated with lightning. No confirmation, but this is the most likely explanation at this time. pic.twitter.com/ArtHCEA1RT
— NWS Pittsburgh (@NWSPittsburgh) January 1, 2022
Pittsburgh residents shared videos on social media capturing the loud boom, shaking windows, and objects falling from shelves. Fortunately, there was no significant damage caused by the explosion.
Shannon Hefferan, a meteorologist with NWS Pittsburgh, expressed, “It’s pretty cool. It’s, you know, in the last couple of years, I mean, we didn’t have that type of technology to see that kind of phenomena before.”
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