Overview

• Observers from six Southern states reported a bright fireball streaking through clear midday skies on June 26, prompting over 200 submissions to the American Meteor Society.
• NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office estimates the meteor measured three feet across, weighed more than a ton and released energy equal to about 20 tons of TNT when it disintegrated 27 miles above West Forest, Georgia.
• The meteor’s breakup generated a pressure wave heard as a sonic boom, which some residents mistook for an earthquake despite no recorded seismic activity.
• A fragment is believed to have penetrated the roof of a Henry County, Georgia home, leaving a golf ball–sized hole in the ceiling and cracking the laminate floor.
• Officials are reviewing dashcam footage and satellite-based lightning mapper readings to confirm the meteor’s trajectory and assess a possible link to the Beta Taurid meteor shower.