{"id":2520,"date":"2026-03-17T23:14:36","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T23:14:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/03\/17\/meteor-causes-thunderous-boom-over-ohio-and-pennsylvania-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T23:14:36","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T23:14:36","slug":"meteor-causes-thunderous-boom-over-ohio-and-pennsylvania-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/03\/17\/meteor-causes-thunderous-boom-over-ohio-and-pennsylvania-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Meteor causes thunderous boom over Ohio and Pennsylvania – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

news Alerts
There are no new alerts at this time
A thunderous boom heard and felt widely across northeastern Ohio and parts of Pennsylvania on Tuesday morning was most likely the result of a meteor.
Area residents took to social media, describing what they heard as \u201cthe loudest boom<\/a>,\u201d \u201ca few sonic booms<\/a>\u201d and \u201crumbling<\/a>.\u201d Others reported seeing a fireball and a bright streak flash across the sky just before 9 a.m. ET.
The Pittsburgh office of the National Weather Service posted a dramatic video on X<\/a>, captured by one of its employees, showing a fireball with a long tail hurtling across a cloudless sky.
The weather service in Cleveland, meanwhile, shared imagery from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration\u2019s GOES-19 satellite, saying: \u201cThe latest GLM imagery (1301Z) does suggest that the boom was a result of a meteor.\u201d
The latest GLM imagery (1301Z) does suggest that the boom was a result of a meteor. pic.twitter.com\/CH7oJ4Q1OY<\/a>
The American Meteor Society, which tracks fireball events around the world, had 140 eyewitness reports for Tuesday\u2019s meteor<\/a> across the Midwest and the Northeast. The reports came from people in 10 states \u2014 including Illinois, Kentucky and New York \u2014 as well as Washington, D.C., and the Canadian province of Ontario.
Bill Cooke, who leads NASA\u2019s Meteoroid Environments Office, said all available data suggests the meteor was first visible at an altitude of about 50 miles above Lake Erie in northern Ohio.
\u201cMoving east of south at 45,000 miles per hour, the fireball \u2014 caused by a small asteroid nearly six feet in diameter and weighing about seven tons \u2014 traveled over 34 miles through the upper atmosphere before fragmenting 34 miles over Valley City, north of Medina,\u201d Cooke said in a statement.
Some fragments most likely continued streaking across the skies, producing meteorites around Medina County, Ohio, he added.
Rocky objects traveling through space are known as meteoroids, but when they enter Earth\u2019s atmosphere and create fireballs, they are called meteors. Any fragments that fall to Earth\u2019s surface are meteorites.
Cooke said Tuesday’s meteor was likely to have unleashed an enormous amount of energy when it fragmented, equivalent to 250 tons of TNT. That caused the sonic booms and explosive noises that startled so many people.
Large meteors that create bright fireballs are relatively rare but not altogether uncommon. Small space rocks, bits of dust and old rocket parts hit Earth daily, according to NASA<\/a>, but most burn up harmlessly in the atmosphere.
Denise Chow is a science and space reporter for NBC News.
© 2026 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

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

news AlertsThere are no new alerts at this timeA thunderous boom heard and felt widely across northeastern Ohio and parts of Pennsylvania on Tuesday morning was most likely the result of a meteor.Area residents took to social media, describing what they heard as \u201cthe loudest boom,\u201d \u201ca few sonic booms\u201d and \u201crumbling.\u201d Others reported seeing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2521,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2520","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2520","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=2520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}