Extremely Bright Fireball Spotted Over North and Central Alabama

Social media lit up like a Christmas tree around 5:30 this evening as thousands across North and Central Alabama saw an extremely bright fireball rolling through the southern sky. Then, loud explosive type “booms” were heard… mostly around Smith Lake and adjacent areas.

The Taurid meteor shower is in progress now… and is most likely the fuss was stirred up by a meteor. Sometimes they disintegrate in the lower atmosphere, and can create the loud shaking noise.

www.alabamawx.com...


American Meteor Society - Reports

Interesting, thanks for sharing

Nothing reported on the local news as of yet.

There are many comments from people who either witnessed or heard the event on their Facebook page though.

www.facebook.com...

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- Alabama residents across the state have reported the sight of a meteor or fire ball at about 5:40 this evening. Holly Britton, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Birmingham, confirmed that several people have called the station to report similar sightings. Britton said she has received calls from as far north as Winston, Ala. and as far south as Clanton. The local radar, however, did not pick up anything significant, she said.

Fox 6 reports that the Blount County Sherriff has received confirmation from the Birmingham Emergency Management Agency that the streaks of light reported were in fact caused by a meteor shower.

Possible Meteor Sightings Reported Across The State

well I look on Earthquake website and no hit
so explosion was airborn only nothing in Alabama
earthquake.usgs.gov...=/images/globes/50_-130.jpg

Posted this in another thread however in a different forum on this event...perhaps between the two threads this particular aspect of some of the descriptions given by eye witnesses can be explained


The rainbow descriptions are rather intriguing.

What causes rainbows?

Rainbows are caused by the splitting of white sunlight into its component colors by raindrops. Some of the light that falls on a water drop enters the drop. As it enters the drop, the color components of the sunlight are refracted (bent) by different amounts depending upon their wavelength (we perceive the different wavelengths as different colors.)

Then, the different colors reflect off the back of the inside of the drop, and when they pass through the front of the drop again, they are refracted once again.

A rainbow is always directly opposite the sun from the observer's perspective. This explains why rainbows are only seen when the sun is low in the sky, usually in the late afternoon (in which case the rainbow will be seen to the east of the observer), or early morning (in which case the rainbow will appear to the west of the observer).

If the observer could see the shadow of his head cast by the sun, it would be in the exact center of a circle where the rainbow forms the top portion of that circle.

Source

So I looked for horizontal rainbow and found this posted on AmericanDigest.org


In that article they have classified the above as a...

A circumhorizontal arc or circumhorizon arc (CHA), also known as a fire rainbow

to add...

It occurs only when the sun is high in the sky, at least 58° above the horizon, and can only occur in the presences of cirrus clouds. It can thus not be observed at locations north of 55°N, except occasionally from mountains.

Which by the descriptions, was the only thing I could find that is relevant to a "straight rainbow". Quite intriguing as I have never heard of a meteor having this characteristic upon entry to the atmosphere.

Thanks to Bill Cooke from NASA in Huntsville.. the best meteor expert in the state. He tells us this about the 5:30 p.m. fireball that was seen over much of our state… “This was NOT a Taurid meteor; probably a random interloper from the asteroid belt. Doppler weather radar shows a meteoritic “rain”, indicating that there are meteorites on the ground in Alabama. The radar signature is stronger than the recent California fireball, which produced meteorites in the San Francisco area. We are still working out a precise location for the meteor impact.” I will have a radar capture here shortly…

Meteorites On The Ground In Alabama?

was this thread about rainbows and unicorns or Meteors

Sorry, some of the posts were distracting

reply to post by racer451


A lot of the eye witnesses posted comments on the local weather man's facebook page and reported seeing a horizontal rainbow in the sky, not sure if it was before or after the meteor breached the atmosphere, but presumably after.

"Saw the rainbow, two of them....."

"I saw a short rainbow about 5. It was strait. My dad was like "that's weird,a rainbow but no rain,wth?" I told my dad to never question logic.. Lol."

"I saw a short, straight rainbow at 5:30"

No unicorns to report of as of yet however, sorry.

Originally posted by Hydrawolf

Thanks to Bill Cooke from NASA in Huntsville.. the best meteor expert in the state. He tells us this about the 5:30 p.m. fireball that was seen over much of our state… “This was NOT a Taurid meteor; probably a random interloper from the asteroid belt. Doppler weather radar shows a meteoritic “rain”, indicating that there are meteorites on the ground in Alabama. The radar signature is stronger than the recent California fireball, which produced meteorites in the San Francisco area. We are still working out a precise location for the meteor impact.” I will have a radar capture here shortly…

Meteorites On The Ground In Alabama?

The explosive boom produced by the meteor registered on a seismograph in Huntsville, operated by Steve Jones of alabamaquake.com

www.alabamawx.com...

I saw the rainbow and it was not horizontal... it was actually vertical from my point of view.... the rainbow was in my view for at least 20 to 30 minutes, my entire drive home... upon arriving home, i get out of my vehicle and then I hear the booms.... it was like two back to back... sounded like it was right behind my house.... it was an eerie.... NASA of huntsville says it was not the scheduled meteor showers, this one was only like 30 miles above the earth if I remember correctly from the report... I will see if I can find the link... anyway.. most meteors are like 60 miles up but this one produced sonic booms.... It was really amazing and I am stoked.. going looking for fragments tomorrow...

Here is a report from a local fox news station in Alabama containing an interview with NASA's Dr Bill Cooke

NASA: Alabama Explosion Was Boulder Sized "Fireball" Meteorite

Damn, I missed it!

Seriously, heard/saw nothing in NE Alabama... of course, I wasn't exactly walking around outside in this chilly weather either.

TheRedneck

Originally posted by Hydrawolf
Here is a report from a local fox news station in Alabama containing an interview with NASA's Dr Bill Cooke

NASA: Alabama Explosion Was Boulder Sized "Fireball" Meteorite

edit on 30-10-2012 by Hydrawolf because: correction

Traveling down to the Earth at over 33,000 miles per hour, Cooke said the booms many people reported hearing where that of the meteor breaking the Earth's sound barrier – over 30 miles above ground.

According to Dr. Bill Cooke at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, in order for a sonic boom to occur the, meteorite must be below 30 miles above earth’s surface, meaning the meteorite likely penetrated very low in our atmosphere. The sonic boom sends shock waves through the atmosphere, eventually striking the ground, which can be picked up by seismologists and something registered on seismographs around 5:29 pm which corresponds around the time of the multiple reports of the fireballs in the sky.

valleywx.com...

reply to post by bmck12


So is it a safe assumption that the rainbow and the meteor were separate events?

reply to post by UberL33t


Yes. No doubt about it.

Also, the "rainbow" could not have been a circumhorizon arc since they can only occur when the Sun is higher than 58°, which I just noticed mentioned in one of your posts above.

I didn't notice any mention of it being "horizontal" in the reports that you quoted. It sounds more like a short section of ordinary rainbow that is being described to me. Short sections sometimes look straight, since the curvature in a short section is not very obvious.

By the way, your first post in this thread where you mention rainbows is a little confused perhaps partly because the term "fire-rainbow" is misleading. A circumhorizon arc has nothing to do with rainbows or fire!

Rainbows are what we see when sunlight passes through water droplets.

Halos and arcs on the other hand are observed when sunlight passes through ice crystals that are usually relatively high in the atmosphere.

They are two separate and distinct atmospheric-optical phenomena, which is why those of us who are interested in the subject hate the term "fire-rainbow", although it looks like we are stuck with it and the misconception that goes along with it.

reply to post by TheRedneck


I missed it too. I live in Madison, AL and heard/saw nothing. I never get to see anything cool >.

reply to post by UberL33t


yes but it was so interesting that such two rare events could happen so very close together... the rainbow was a sun dog actually two sun dogs which were produced by the outer bands of Sandy...

Originally posted by bmck12
yes but it was so interesting that such two rare events could happen so very close together... the rainbow was a sun dog actually two sun dogs which were produced by the outer bands of Sandy...

Neither phenomena are particularly rare.

Fireballs like this one happen twice daily somewhere in the world it's been estimated, but I personally think that this figure is a bit conservative.

Sun dogs are even more common. On days when the sky is free from low level cloud that obstructs the view of the higher level clouds that cause sun dogs, I'd estimate I see them about once every one or two days. Sometimes I have seen them for many days in a row.

A truly rare halo display would be something like this one photographed in Huntsville, Alabama:


Image credit and copyright: David Hathaway/NASA/MSFC

The apparition is almost certainly connected to hurricane Sandy. The core of the storm swept well north of Alabama, but Sandy's outer bands did pass over the area, leaving behind a thin haze of ice crystals in cirrus clouds. Sunlight shining through the crystals produced an unusually rich variety of ice halos.

"By my count, there are two sun dogs, a 22o halo, a parahelic circle, an upper tangent arc, and a parry arc," says Chris Brightwell, who also photographed the display. "It was amazing."

"Very impressive," agreed onlooker Kyle Winkleman. "This was a once-in-a-decade event for our area."

It might not be necessary to wait another decade for a repeat performance. Some researchers believe that superstorms will become more common in the years ahead as a result of climate change, creating new things both terrible and beautiful to see overhead. Sky watchers in the storm zone should remain alert for the unusual.

click here for more.

So saying that to see sun dogs and hear a sonic boom on the same day is rare, is a bit like saying it's rare to hear a sonic boom from a meteor and for it to be raining (if you are living in a temperate climate).

It is definitely rare for most people to hear a sonic boom from a meteorite though - most people miss them.

Wrong thread as there was another spotted over Washington last night.