Meteor Show Over Iowa

TOM ALEX TALEX@DMREG.COM • April 15, 2010

A television station in Madison, Wis., has received pictures from a viewer that purport to be fires started by an exploding meteor that streaked across the Midwest sky Wednesday night.

WISC-TV at Madison says a viewer believes the fires were started by meteorites striking a wooded area near Blue River in southwest Wisconsin.

Kimberly Kienitz, of Avoca, Wis., told The Des Moines Register today, that she was leaving a first responders training session for EMS workers with a friend Wednesday night when the night sky turned green. "It was bright green and there was a huge ball of fire."

She went home and started following accounts of the meteor on Facebook, then learned there was a possible impact site. She headed that direction, she said, and took photographs of small fires in the woods. Kienitz said the meteorites apparently landed in a roughly one mile area between Blue River and Boscobel.

"People asked me if I saw pieces of it," Kienitz said. "I told them, no, it was dark and we were in the woods."



John Haase, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in the Quad Cities, said witnesses reported hearing a crackling sound. If that's true, he said, the meteor might have been some 30 feet wide, making it a roughly once-a-year event for the planet.

Susan Curtis, a secretary with the Richland County, Wis., Sheriff's Office, said she heard a loud boom overhead like thunder, but it lasted much longer. "It just kept rumbling. I thought something hit behind our house," she said.

Similar reports came from a wide area of the Midwest.

It was moving from west to east.

Meteorologist Haddie McLean, of WISC-TV, said the National Weather Service likely would be investigating the viewer's report.

"Well before it reached the horizon, it broke up into smaller pieces and was lost from sight," officials said on the Weather Service website. The fireball was seen across at least five states, according to the weather service: Iowa, northern Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and southern Wisconsin.

Another Weather Service official said Minnesota can be added to that list.

"Several reports of a prolonged sonic boom were received from areas north of Highway 20, along with shaking of homes, trees and various other objects including wind chimes," the weather service website says.

The National Weather Service in the Quad Cities appeared to capture a portion of the smoke trail on Doppler radar. It appeared "as a thin line extending across portions of Grant and Iowa Counties in Wisconsin, positioned nearly 88 miles north-northeast of Davenport at an elevation of just over 24,000 feet. Meteorologist Haase said it may have exploded at about 6,000 feet. "Usually they vaporize but there are reports that chucks hit the ground." For the record: A meteoroid is a small, solid body traveling through space. A meteor is a meteoroid heating up as it enters earth's atmosphere, causing a luminous phenomenon. A meteorite is a piece of a relatively large meteoroid that survives the earth's atmosphere and strikes the surface.