{"id":314656,"date":"2026-03-05T18:10:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T18:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/314656\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T18:10:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T18:10:08","slug":"mysterious-fireball-sonic-boom-experienced-in-vancouver-western-washington-was-indeed-a-meteor-traveling-at-33-kmps-confirms-nasa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/314656\/","title":{"rendered":"Mysterious fireball, sonic boom experienced in Vancouver, Western Washington was indeed a meteor traveling at 33 kmps, confirms Nasa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <img src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/vancouver-saw-a-flash-of-light-followed-by-a-sonic-boom-on-tuesday-nasa-confirmed-it-was-a-meteor.jp.jpeg\" alt=\"Mysterious fireball, sonic boom experienced in Vancouver, Western Washington was indeed a meteor traveling at 33 kmps, confirms Nasa\" decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"high\"\/> The fireball seen in the sky from across Western Washington and British Columbia, followed by a sonic boom, was indeed a meteor which was travelling slightly east of north at a speed of about 33 kilometres per second, or about 119,000 km\/h, reports confirmed. Several people called the police without understanding whether it was an accident or an earthquake. Meteors are only the size of a pea but their high velocity can make them visible in the night sky. And the flash experienced Tuesday night in the sky was too fast to be human-made space debris. according to Robert Lunsford with the American Meteor Society.&#8221;A meteor the size of a softball can produce a flash as bright as the full moon and qualify as a fireball,&#8221; Lunsford said in a statement as reported by the CBC News. &#8220;Therefore, this object was still relatively small, but capable of producing an impressive sight in the sky.&#8221;The flashlight was followed by a sonic boom, which led experts to believe in its velocity. A sonic boom is created when an object travels through the upper levels of the atmosphere so fast that it compresses the air ahead of it and heats it up. In a statement to the Canadian Press, NASA confirmed reports of a meteor over the Pacific Northwest shortly after 9 pm (local time) Tuesday. The meteor disintegrated at an altitude of about 65 kilometres above Greenmantle Mountain in BC&#8217;s Garibaldi Provincial Park.University of British Columbia astronomy professor Brett Gladman said initial indications showed that the fireball was caused by the natural entry of a 10-centimetre sized rocky asteroid fragment at the top of the earth&#8217;s atmosphere. Gladman later added that the asteroid fragment could be up to 100 centimetres in size.&#8221;The visible meteor is the glowing atmosphere heated by rock&#8217;s passage and the audible boom is because the speed of the object is faster than the speed of sound (like the supersonic boom related to fast jet planes),&#8221; Gladman said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The fireball seen in the sky from across Western Washington and British Columbia, followed by a sonic boom,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":314657,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[170816,170817,170814,170818,111,139,69,147,392,170813,170815],"class_list":["post-314656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-canada-meteor-shower","tag-meteor-spotted-in-vancouver","tag-nasa-meteor-confirmation","tag-nasa-vancouver-meteor","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space","tag-vancouver-fireball","tag-vancouver-meteor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}