A meteor that exploded Saturday afternoon near Boston shook buildings and scared locals after a loud boom was heard at about 2:30 p.m.
Residents throughout New England experienced a “double boom” caused by a 3-feet-wide meteor that entered the atmosphere north of Boston, according to the American Meteor Society, the Associated Press reports. Preliminary fireball reports on the society’s website show sightings spanned from Vermont to Delaware.
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Robert Lunsford, the society’s fireball program monitor, said people reported hearing the blast, feeling the ground shake, or seeing the meteor itself. He said the celestial object looks like a shooting star in the daytime sky and is about a yard wide.
Many locals initially speculated that the “boom” and tremors were an earthquake, and many people filed reports with the U.S. Geological Survey to register the ground shaking they experienced with the National Earthquake Information Center. Agency spokesman Steve Sobie said Saturday afternoon that no event was registered on the agency’s seismographs, confirming the event was not due to an earthquake.
NASA said the fireball reached speeds of up to 75,000 miles per hour and exploded 40 miles north of the Massachusetts-New Hampshire border, according to the New York Times.
The Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security said in an initial statement that “there are no known emergency police or fire requests connected to these reports and we do not believe there is any public safety threat.”
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Lunsford said that if the meteor hadn’t exploded, it would have landed in the ocean.
A similar “sonic boom” was also heard yesterday in South Carolina.
