Update on 12/28/2010 & 12/29/201 East Coast Meteors
by Mike Hankey, under Comets & Meteors
On 12/29/2010 a second meteor shot through the skies west of Maryland at 8:30 PM. This made for an exciting week and is causing some confusion with peoples observations. Two big fireballs in the same location 26 hours apart is certainly an odd coincidence. Reports of the 12/28/2010 meteor touching down in Fredrick and being found are most certainly FALSE.
Tuesday night’s meteor (or meteor #1) was captured on video by York Water Company. That makes at least 3 significant meteors captured by York Water in about 18 months. Here is the latest York Water video:
Tuesday night’s meteor is looking to have touched ground somewhere in South Central Pennsylvania. We are not sure just yet where Wednesday night’s meteor landed, but it was somewhere West of Freeland MD. I’m working on the AMS plots for both events, but won’t have these together for a few more days.
All these meteor falls sure are exciting, but guess what… Not one of the 6 meteors that have flown across the Maryland skies since July 6th, 2009 has come even close in size to the Mason Dixon Meteor. Nation wide, there has not been a single report of homes shaking to the level that the MDM caused since July 6th 2009. The closest was Wisconsin which resulted in 100+ meteorite finds, but even Wisconsin did not shake homes like the MDM. These facts are encouraging for those still searching for the Mason Dixon Meteor.
January 4th, 2011 on 2:35 pm
Mike, it seems to me that ever since you started getting interested in meteorites, we’ve had an awful lot of them fly over our heads. I hope you’re not, like, some kind of meteorite magnet or something. You know, you’ve gotta be careful what you wish for. A smoldering crater is hard to live in.