A “boom” heard in Ohio and neighboring states on Tuesday morning appears to have been from a meteor, the National Weather Service in Cleveland said.
The NWS said imagery “does suggest that the boom was a result of a meteor.”
National Weather Service in Pittsburgh – PHOTO: The National Weather Service in Pittsburgh released this image of an apparent meteor.
The NWS in Pittsburgh said residents in western Pennsylvania also reported the loud “boom” and fireball in the sky.
The NWS said one of its employees filmed the apparent meteor shooting across the sky in the Pittsburgh area.
The meteor was also spotted further south in Virginia and Kentucky, Bill Cooke, the lead of NASA’s Meteoroid Environments Office, told ABC Cleveland affiliate WEWS.
Cooke told ABC News that the asteroid was 6 feet across, had a weight of about 8 tons and traveled at about 40,000 miles per hour.
The meteor was over Medina County, Ohio, outside of Cleveland, when it blew apart with the energy of about 250 tons of TNT, creating the loud blast, Cooke said, and pieces of the meteor rained down in the area.
Cooke said sizable fireballs occur about once a month over the U.S., but they usually are not as visible or loud as this one.
ABC News’ Alex Stone contributed to this report.