Meteor storm crashes through the roof of family home after fireball spotted in sky
Several metro Atlanta city and county officials relayed reports of a 'fireball' sighting from the sky on Thursday afternoon (Picture: X/@CodyAlcorn/11Alive)
Some people reported an earthquake after seeing the flaming object but it was not immediately confirmed (Picture: X/@Daniel_Bonds/WLTX)
‘It pierced through the roof all the way through and cracked through the laminate flooring to the concrete’, said Ryan Morrison, director of emergency management for the area. ‘That’s why we think it’s part of this meteor storm’ (Picture: @CodyAlcorn/X, 11Alive)
He said the resident asked not to be identified because of their small child. More than 100 reports of a fireball were submitted to the American Meteor Society coming from South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee, between 12.15pm and 12.30pm ET on Thursday. ‘It just came out of nowhere,’ one of the reports stated (Picture: @CodyAlcorn/X, 11Alive)
A firefighter in East Tennessee said on X (formerly Twitter) that he saw a ‘huge ball of fire fall from the sky’. ‘I’m not crazy!’ he wrote. ‘Anyone else see it? Right around 12:20pm ET. Very cool but a little unnerving given the current times!’ (Picture: @Daniel_Bonds/X, WLTX)
Officials with the National Weather Service in Atlanta recovered the material and were not immediately able to confirm if it was part of a meteor or ‘space junk or a broken piece of satellite’, said meteorologist-in-charge Keith Stellman (Picture: @CodyAlcorn/X, 11Alive)
‘It happened around the same time we started getting reports of a possible earthquake and some people saying they were hearing thunder,’ he told The New York Times. A fireball is an extremely bright meteor, according to the US Geological Survey, a nonprofit scientific organisation founded in 1911 to support meteor astronomy research. Last year a flash lit up the sky and created a sound near Minnesota prompting scientists to investigate whether it could’ve been a meteorite or UFO (Picture: @Daniel_Bonds/X, WLTX)
