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Fireball Spotted over Northeastern USA

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Re: Fireball Spotted over Northeastern USA

#22
post #15

Are we having lately many more meteor sightings than "before", or is it just that we have better tools/more cameras to spot it?

As a completely uneducated guess, I’d argue more cameras of decent quality, and more of them with motion detection etc.

There’s certainly a case for the more cameras argument, though it doesn’t apply to this specific event: almost every UK news article about meteors, lightning storms, and at one point a sonic boom from a jet, features a recording from someone’s video doorbell.

Re: Fireball Spotted over Northeastern USA

#26
I think I saw one of these during a meteor shower, ten years ago, in Georgia. It was so fast, and so unexpected, that I question my own recollection of it. When I tell people I saw a fireball, they shrug. They don't know how it's different from a shooting star. But in my memory it looks like a smoky fireball, and I had the impression that it was particularly close to the earth.

Re: Fireball Spotted over Northeastern USA

#28
post #15

Are we having lately many more meteor sightings than "before", or is it just that we have better tools/more cameras to spot it?

Around 2003, I was driving home from San Francisco back to Danville late at night. After the 580 tunnel, as I crested the hill, the entire sky lit up bright green and I saw a huge glowing ball like this that lasted for a few seconds. These days, I'd have dashcam footage to show you. I was driving alone and the roads were pretty much empty, and it's kind of weird when something so unusual happens and you feel like the only one who saw it.

Re: Fireball Spotted over Northeastern USA

#29
post #26

I think I saw one of these during a meteor shower, ten years ago, in Georgia. It was so fast, and so unexpected, that I question my own recollection of it. When I tell people I saw a fireball, they shrug. They don't know how it's different from a shooting star. But in my memory it looks like a smoky fireball, and I had the impression that it was particularly close to the earth.

I had an experience a bit like that, but with mini-tornadoes, somewhere along the M11 in the UK (Essex I think, but perhaps the edge of Cambs). I recall looking it up afterwards and it seemed to be 'a thing', though none of the news examples I found from various years before the event were anything like as extreme - tens and tens of them, well-formed.

A truly bizarre 'what is happening' experience for me - before that I would've said flatly 'we don't get tornadoes here'. Never seen anything like it, before or since, nor even heard of it except for having looked into it then.

Re: Fireball Spotted over Northeastern USA

#30
post #3

In case the link won't load for anyone else, there's a YouTube video on the page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfNdaYqVxR0

Damn YouTube is pushing the ads these days. I don't remember last time I opened YouTube and didn't see an ad on open. I'm logged into Chrome, no VPN or funny business. What a racket.
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