{"id":530245,"date":"2026-03-18T05:58:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T05:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/530245\/"},"modified":"2026-03-18T05:58:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T05:58:07","slug":"suspected-meteor-falling-over-cleveland-could-be-seen-several-states-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/530245\/","title":{"rendered":"Suspected meteor falling over Cleveland could be seen several states away"},"content":{"rendered":"

CLEVELAND \u2014 A suspected meteor that fell over the Cleveland area on Tuesday shook homes and startled residents who heard a boom that some compared to an explosion.<\/p>\n

People hundreds of miles away reported seeing the bright fireball even though it was 9 a.m. The American Meteor Society said it received reports from Wisconsin to Maryland.<\/p>\n

“This one really does look like it’s a fireball, which means it’s a meteorite \u2014 a small asteroid,” said astronomer Carl Hergenrother, the group’s executive director.<\/p>\n

One of our employees, Jared Rackley, caught this morning’s meteor on camera from the Pittsburgh area. pic.twitter.com\/2LdqOpChti<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 NWS Pittsburgh (@NWSPittsburgh) March 17, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n

“So much stuff is being launched that a lot of times what you see burning up is just reentering satellites. But usually those don’t get especially bright,” he said.<\/p>\n

He estimated that Tuesday’s fireball might have been the size of a softball or basketball, or perhaps even larger, and that it would have hit the atmosphere at “many tens of miles per second.”<\/p>\n

Staff at the National Weather Service in Cleveland also heard the boom and felt the vibrations, and suspected it was a meteor. They had no early reports of any debris being found.<\/p>\n

“There could be some small fragments, but a lot of it would have burned up in the atmosphere,” NWS meteorologist Brian Mitchell said.<\/p>\n

Meteors typically fall somewhere in the U.S. about once a day, while smaller pieces of space dust might fall 10 times an hour, Hergenrother said. Scientists track meteors through a network of special cameras that help capture the night sky, but more members of the public are catching them on cellphones and security cameras of their own.<\/p>\n

“Now we’re seeing them, and there’s dozens of videos popping up all the time,” Hergenrother said.<\/p>\n