Bright Fireball Over Cleveland Rattles Homes, Visible Across Multiple States

A meteor streaked across the sky over Cleveland Tuesday morning, creating a loud boom that shook houses and was visible from Wisconsin to Maryland. The American Meteor Society believes the space rock was roughly the size of a softball or basketball before burning up in Earth's atmosphere.

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Residents across the Cleveland region experienced a startling wake-up call Tuesday morning when a meteor blazed through the sky, producing a thunderous sound that rattled windows and shook buildings throughout the area.

Despite occurring at 9 a.m. in broad daylight, the brilliant space object was spotted by observers across hundreds of miles, with sightings reported from as far as Wisconsin down to Maryland, according to the American Meteor Society.

Carl Hergenrother, executive director of the American Meteor Society, confirmed the celestial visitor’s authenticity. “This one really does look like it’s a fireball, which means it’s a meteorite — a small asteroid,” Hergenrother explained.

He distinguished this event from typical space debris, noting, “So much stuff is being launched that a lot of times what you see burning up is just reentering satellites. But usually those don’t get especially bright.”

According to Hergenrother’s assessment, the space rock likely measured somewhere between a softball and basketball in diameter, possibly even larger, and would have been traveling at “many tens of miles per second” when it entered Earth’s atmosphere.

Workers at Cleveland’s National Weather Service office personally experienced the phenomenon, both hearing the explosive sound and feeling the resulting vibrations. They also believe a meteor was responsible for the disturbance, though no debris has been recovered in the immediate aftermath.

“There could be some small fragments, but a lot of it would have burned up in the atmosphere,” stated NWS meteorologist Brian Mitchell.

Such cosmic events occur more frequently than many realize, with Hergenrother noting that meteors typically impact somewhere in the United States approximately once daily, while tiny space particles may fall as often as ten times each hour. While scientists monitor these phenomena through specialized camera networks designed to observe the night sky, increasing numbers of ordinary citizens are documenting them using mobile phones and personal security systems.

“Now we’re seeing them, and there’s dozens of videos popping up all the time,” Hergenrother observed.