WASHINGTON POST: Cleveland rocks as giant meteor explodes over the United States
The explosion produced a loud booming noise and even shook the ground.
A meteor exploded Tuesday morning over Lake Erie in the United States.
The American Meteor Society received hundreds reports of a visible meteor from the Eastern Shore of Maryland to Kentucky; it was widely visible across Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan and western New York state, too.
Though the meteor occurred during the daylight hours, it was bright enough to be seen for about 5½ seconds over Cleveland. Tens of thousands of people across northern Ohio heard a loud boom, and some people even felt the ground shake. That may have been the meteor’s sonic boom or the sound of it actually exploding. A seismometer, or earthquake-measuring instrument, detected subtle shaking of the ground at 8:56 am in Lorain County, Ohio.
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The American Meteor Society is still combing through reports to reconstruct the path the meteor took.
The GOES East weather satellite, meanwhile, detected a flash at 8:56 am. It was plotted as a lightning strike, but ground-based lightning detection networks confirm there were no thunderstorms present. Instead, this was the infrared-light emission resulting from the meteor’s explosion.
The satellite is 22,234 miles (36,000km) above the ground.
It’s too early to know the approximate size or trajectory of the meteor, or whether any fragments reached the ground.
This does happen from time to time, however. On January 16, 2018, a meteor exploded over Michigan, producing shaking equivalent to that of a 1.8-magnitude earthquake. Fragments were found after the fact, and debris could even be seen on weather radars.
On June 26, a meteor exploding over Atlanta produced a similar “lightning” signature on weather satellites.
© 2026 , The Washington Post
Originally published on The Washington Post
