{"id":20409,"date":"2026-05-31T06:14:59","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T06:14:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/05\/31\/nasa-says-may-30-meteor-released-energy-over-massachusetts-equal-to-300-tons-of-tnt-westwood-minute\/"},"modified":"2026-05-31T06:14:59","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T06:14:59","slug":"nasa-says-may-30-meteor-released-energy-over-massachusetts-equal-to-300-tons-of-tnt-westwood-minute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/05\/31\/nasa-says-may-30-meteor-released-energy-over-massachusetts-equal-to-300-tons-of-tnt-westwood-minute\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA Says May 30 Meteor Released Energy over Massachusetts Equal to 300 Tons of TNT – Westwood Minute"},"content":{"rendered":"

Around 2 p.m. on Saturday, May 30, local residents may have heard one or more loud booms, which some believed to be a fallen tree, car trouble, an explosion, or an airplane, but which NASA has explained as a sound from a meteor breaking up over Massachusetts and New Hampshire, releasing the energy equivalent of about 300 tons of TNT.
Around 4:00 p.m., Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security<\/a> announced via X.com that it had \u201creceived reports of an audible boom and ground tremors in Eastern Massachusetts,\u201d but that it did not know the cause. It noted, however, that it was unaware of any requests for an emergency response due to the incident and did not believe there was any public safety threat.
The USGS<\/a>\u00a0Earthquake Hazards Program, which collects data using seismic sensors, opened an event page after receiving \u201cDid You Feel It?\u201d reports from people who experienced light to moderate shaking. USGS later described the event as a \u201cwidely felt sonic boom from a suspected bolide,\u201d rather than an earthquake.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) explains a bolide as a large meteor that explodes in the atmosphere, which can create multiple sonic booms. A similarly described event<\/a> took place in Pennsylvania on January 1, 2022. Data showed the energy related to the Pennsylvania event was similar to 30 tons of TNT, said NOAA.
In the hours following Saturday afternoon’s sonic boom, local meteorologists<\/a> pointed to an unusual flash recorded by NOAA\u2019s GOES-19 weather satellite that occurred around the time of the boom, and which they said was distinguishable from lightning. Meteorologist Dave Epstein<\/a> assessed the event as occurring over Cape Cod Bay. Others called the event a meteor or fireball or bolide.
Shortly before 8:00 p.m., NASA Space Alerts on X.com <\/a>summarized the incident: \u201cEyewitnesses in New England and @NOAA\u2019s GOES-19 satellite reported a bright fireball on Saturday, May 30, at 2:06 p.m. EDT accompanied by a loud noise. The meteor appears to have fragmented at an altitude of 40 miles over northeast MA and southeast NH. The energy released at breakup is estimated to be equivalent to about 300 tons of TNT, which accounts for the loud noise.\u201d
Editor\u2019s note:<\/strong>\u00a0This article was written by a human.\u00a0AI assistance was used to help locate the NOAA satellite image that serves as lead photo for the article –\u00a0a static image of the light event, timestamped at 18:11 UTC, or 2:11 p.m. EST. Similar NOAA GOES-19 GLM imagery has been included by Boston.com, NBC10 Boston, and Fox Weather<\/a> in their reporting of this event.\u00a0<\/em>The timestamp of the image included by Westwood Minute<\/a> likely differs slightly from time of the event reported by <\/em>both NOAA and <\/em>NASA because the NOAA imagery is displayed in 5 minute intervals.<\/em>
Moderate rain, with a high of 54 and low of 44 degrees. Don't forget your umbrella! Cloudy for the morning, moderate rain for the afternoon, clear during the evening, patchy rain nearby overnight.<\/em>
Thank goodness that is over.\u00a0 What a waste of time, energy and resources for both the Town and the Land Trustthat could have been spent so much more productively.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Around 2 p.m. on Saturday, May 30, local residents may have heard one or more loud booms, which some believed to be a fallen tree, car trouble, an explosion, or an airplane, but which NASA has explained as a sound from a meteor breaking up over Massachusetts and New Hampshire, releasing the energy equivalent of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20410,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}