Meteor Over Arizona Shocks Residents with Explosions Heard Statewide
A meteor shower was visible to residents in Arizona on Tuesday night and left some amazed as thunderous booms were heard in addition to long streaking lights filling the night sky.
Local residents stated that the explosions could be heard from Tucson to as far away as Las Vegas, Nev., according to ABC.
"My wife and I and my son were sitting in the house, and we felt this absolutely tremendous explosion, I mean, it shook the windows, it shook everything in the house," Arizona resident Tony Kubrak told KGUN. "I stepped outside, and had to be no more than three minutes later after I hear all of this, and I see this tremendous, white, bright light in the western sky. And it was just...it was absolutely enormous, I couldn't believe it."
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According to NASA, Tuesday night's meteor shower was just a precursor to the annual Geminid meteor shower that will begin on Thursday night and will be able to be seen around the world.
Officials at NASA stated that there were another eight meteor showers that were recorded during the same time period.
The Arizona meteor that shocked area residents was not observed by the space agency since it was small and not traveling all that fast, roughly 45,000 mph. Other meteors observed in the other showers were traveling in excess of 78,000 miles per hour, NASA meteor expert Bill Cooke told CNN.
According to Cooke, the Arizona meteor's direction was not typical for a meteor belonging to the Geminid meteor shower. The space rock weighed approximately 100 pounds and had a diameter of approximately 16 inches before burning up in the atmosphere.
In November, a similar meteor blast was captured over Southern California. Much like the Arizona meteor, California's space rock had a mysteriousness aspect to it; the North American Aerospace Defense Command's weather department was unable to confirm that it was indeed a meteor.
