High altitude explosion this AM. (meteor?)

This happened about 0530 this morning. Southeastern Washington/Northeastern Oregon. Just before daybreak. Bright flash followed shortly afterwards by a rather large boom.

I was outside, when the sky to the southwest over Oregon, as near as I could tell, lit up with a bright blueish-white flash. Followed several seconds later, by a loud booming report. As near as I could tell, it was way up, and out over Oregon somewhere. southwest of Walla Walla, where I am anyway.

Radio says a meteor exploded. If so...we just had a near miss of rather large proportions, Tunguska II if you will...

With the Hanford site and the Umatilla Army Depot in the vacinity, could have been catastrophic. Does anyone know anything about it? I keep missing the local radio news updates.

Apparently the entire Northwest was ablaze with meteorite explosions. KOMO TV in Seattle reports explosions over Whidbey Island. Coeur D'Alene, Idaho reports some as well.

These apparently occurred before, by 2 hours or so, the one that I saw. Interesting, and a little scary.

On a second glance at Komo's page, I think that story is a couple of years old, and isn't related at all to this mornings event. Or am I just an idiot this morning?

[edit on 19-2-2008 by seagull]

Here are a few articles I could find concerning meteors in the NW this morning:

Meteor seen across wide swath of Pacific Northwest

...Various callers to the station say it resembled summer lighting, a rocket, a satellite or an exploding transformer...

canadianpress.google.com...

www.tdn.com...

So it seems that this one hit the ground somewhere in Washington state.

Hopefully there will be more news and video of the impact area.

I once saw a meteor explode. It was nighttime so I had a nice view and the bang was very very loud. I can imagine it wakes a lot of people up.

I found another topic on ats... could this be related ? ats topic

reply to post by seagull


Obvious question: how far apart in time were the flash and boom?

I checked USGS but they don't record an earthquake today. I figured they would from the description. Scary. I saw that great meteor shower in Nov 2001 it was beautiful. Hope everyone is ok.

reply to post by disownedsky



No more than a couple of seconds. Umatilla county sherrifs dept. reports many calls this morning from people all over the area. Umatilla county is directly south of Walla Walla county. For those that don't know, Walla Walla county is in south eastern Washington, so Umatilla county would be northeastern Oregon.

Damned loud. Various reports have the color of the flash purple as well as the blue white that I saw.

Time between flash and boom couldn't have been more than a couple of seconds. Deep rumbling boom, too. Not the sharp bang one might expect.

Meteor news #1

This is the only link to this locally that I can find. Apparently local law enforcement switchboards went beserko this morning...lol.

Quite understandable, startled the whey outta me. My first thought was oh, crap the depot in Umatilla just blew up. Bad news, should that ever happen...all sorts of weaponized gasses and stuff...

There are two meteor showers potentially active now: Alpha Centaurids (ACE) and the Delta Leonid's (DLE).

Interesting report from Idaho including description of multi piece meteor:

“I saw it from Hailey,” Robb Thomas wrote. “It was in several pieces kind of stuck together. It had a flat front on it and when it went behind the mountains it seemed to impact and make two large flashes and several smaller ones.”

Idaho Press-Tribune story here.

Might of been the explosion from the satelite by a missle.

reply to post by seagull


Yes, I bet it was a meteor exploding, but nothing comparable to Tunguska. It must have been quite close to you, and would have killed you quickly had it been that much energy release.

Originally posted by cockadoodledo
Might of been the explosion from the satelite by a missle.

that hasnt happened yet


i asked my wife if she heard anything this morning

we live in seattle, wish i couldve seen, i got a nice camerai most certainly would of clipped pics of it

reply to post by disownedsky


It apparently wasn't quite as high as I first thought. 20000 ft or so, I guess. It sure was startling though, .

reply to post by seagull

It takes sound about 18+ seconds to travel 20,000 feet, so I don't think the explosion was that high.

i dont know if this is connected or not, but my mother saw a meteor streaking across the sky today.

it was during the day, sometime in the afternoon, so it must have been very intense.

she said it was green, and stayed lit up for a long time.

im waiting for some official reports though, if there will be any...

same thing happened to me this summer, i also saw a green meteor at noon, and that one was reported to have fallen somewhere near Slovenia.

i live in croatia, by the way.

yeah, and no explosion.

Couple of quick things...

With the recent TU24 mania, wouldn't most meteor showers/near misses be well known in advance of the event?

I mean, we were all over TU24. i find it strange that a meteor could get so close, explode, and yet none of us were aware it was coming.

Are there any weather services or astronomical websites which told of this meteor before it happened?


Also, has anyone considered the possibility of piezoelectricity? Quite often, before major earthquakes, the earth itself discharges energy which can often be seen as explosions in the sky. The OP's description perfectly matched a piezoelectric outburst which would precipitate a major earthquake.

The only thing i am not sure of it whether this type of explosion would make a noise or not.


Anyway just a couple of possibilities and options to ponder.

Great post though

It was all over the news here in portland. Here is a link to a news site about it:

www.kgw.com...

PORTLAND, Ore. -- A meteor was seen across a wide area of the Pacific Northwest early Tuesday, including the Portland Metro area.

There's also a video of it!!!

I'm not sure how to embed video but here's the link to the video. It's a bright flash on the left side of the screen. You won't be able to miss it.

www.kgw.com...

Tela

[edit on 2/19/2008 by Telafree]

I had just gone out to my truck to go to work when it happened this morning. It was a bright blue/white light that lit up everything and then the boom it sounded almost like a sonic boom. Interesting way to start the morning.

reply to post by Telafree

i tried that video link
but my firefox browser could not load it

Try this link...

www.kgw.com...

Tela