Multiple reports of mysterious 'fireball' falling from the sky over the Carolinas

Multiple reports of mysterious 'fireball' falling from the sky over the Carolinas

Reports of a "fireball" sighting from the sky on Thursday afternoon have come from all across North Carolina, South Carolina and the broader Southeast. 

It was described by experts from the American Meteor Society as a bolide, a large and rare fireball that creates a sonic boom. 

The first reports started coming in around noon with several people saying it appeared to be falling debris, like a meteor or asteroid, streaking across the sky. WCNC Charlotte's newsroom received multiple calls about the fireball. Multiple users on Reddit reported seeing on Interstate 485. It was also reported in Atlanta, Greenville and Charleston. 

The National Weather Service in Charleston reported that a streak was seen over the North Carolina-Virginia border between 12:51 p.m. and 12:56 p.m. A streak was seen within the cloud-free sky near Gasbury, Virginia. 

Weather Impact Chief Meteorologist Brad Panovich says seeing something this clearly in the daytime is quite rare. 

"I'm curious if this was not some kind of piece of space debris, a rocket body, maybe a degrading satellite or some other piece of space junk," Panovich said on Live Impact News. "It's rare for something to be that bright in the middle of the day. If it was a meteor, it would have to have been a really large meteor to be that bright in the middle of the day."

Panovich speculated that the object's apparent free-fall made him think it was space debris. 

"This was going vertical, like straight down, which makes me think that this was probably something that came back into orbit and then moved straight down and burned up," he said. "This to me, just on the videos alone, and sometimes perspective could be wrong, this looks much lower in the atmosphere. So whatever this was, it survived longer, it was able to get really, really bright and probably because of that, there might be some meteorite or piece of debris that made it to the surface."

Officials in Henry County, Georgia, told WXIA that a piece of debris crashed through a roof around the time the fireball was seen streaking across the sky. It's unclear if the two events are linked. 

What is a bolide? What is a fireball?

The NASA Center for Near Earth Object Studies further defines bolides as "exceptionally bright meteors that are spectacular enough to to be seen over a very wide area."

"They are moving very fast and when they hit Earth's atmosphere they could be going 50,000 MPH or faster, but they quickly decelerate and by the time they come and, and, you know, like they stop all their cosmic velocity at like 20,000 or 30,000 feet up, and by the time they hit your roof, they're going about the speed of a golf ball or maybe a little bit faster," said Mike Hankey, operations manager of the American Meteor Society. "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. They can cause a lot of harm, damages, they'll go through multiple floors of a home oftentimes, but believe it or not, it is a blessing to have your home hit by a meteorite, because it's a very rare thing to happen as long as no one's hurt in the process."

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