East Coast meteor lights up skies from New York to Ontario

The fireball was rolling at about 56,000 miles per hour when it shattered into pieces.

Pieces of a meteor were seen falling from the sky over the east coast of the United States and Canada in the middle of the day.

Residents of upstate New York began seeing flashes of light around noon on Wednesday, and by evening, the American Meteor Society (AMS) had received more than 150 reports in seven states. The event was primarily seen in New York and Ontario, but the organization has also received reports of sightings in Maryland, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

Dozens of people in New York contacted local authorities and the media Wednesday afternoon after hearing a “loud boom,” according to AMS. The noise was loud enough to shake the windows, but clouds in the area prevented sighting of the source, the Associated Press reported.

The sound occurs when a very bright fireball enters the stratosphere below an altitude of about 30 miles and explodes like a fireball – an extremely bright meteor.

Traveling west at a speed of about 56,000 miles per hour, the meteor shattered into pieces at an altitude of about 22 miles, which then produced the bright lights seen across the east coast.

The fireball’s physical flight ended somewhere over Cayuga Lake in New York City, the ground track of the event, which was calculated by NASA, shows.

EarthCam tweeted video of the meteor crossing the Toronto skyline on Wednesday afternoon, captured by a camera facing the CN Tower.

Several thousand fireballs occur in Earth’s atmosphere every day, but the majority of them occur over oceans and uninhabited areas, and many are obscured by daylight, according to AMS. Additionally, the fireballs that occur at night are often missed because no one is around to see them. The brighter the meteor, the rarer the event.

But several meteor sightings have taken place over the past month.

On Monday, a bright meteor was seen across Japan as it fell in the sky. Small fragments of the meteor may have reached the ground, experts said.

NASA also confirmed that a trail of blue light seen in central Texas near Killeen in mid-November was a meteor.

“A giant ball like a meteorite changed the color spectrum of the rainbow until it turned into a beautiful turquoise,” Mary Ann Miron, a resident of Texas, told the station. Houston ABC, KTRK, describing the light as “huge” and colorful.