NASA Confirms Meteor Over Skies of Northern Ohio

Name: NASA Confirms Meteor Over Skies of Northern Ohio
Uploaded: 2026-03-18T08:53:22.000Z
Description: A meteor was seen over the skies of Ohio on Tuesday.

A meteor was seen over the skies of Ohio on Tuesday.

John Rigolizzo

Published: 3/17/2026, 8:58:58 PM EDT

A meteor was seen over the skies of Ohio on Tuesday.

Ohioans reported a massive sound like an explosion around 9 a.m. Other observers saw a large fireball over the skies of Lake Erie. Experts confirmed via satellite imagery that it was in fact a meteor that broke up in the atmosphere over the northern part of the state.

Residents of the town of Avon inundated the local police department with reports of a loud boom over the town. But they were not able to confirm the source of the sound.

An X user reported the boom and tagged the Cleveland station of the National Weather Service. NWS Cleveland responded to the post, citing imagery from a GLM—a Geostationary Lightning Mapper—which suggested the boom came from a meteor.

NWS Pittsburgh said the fireball is possibly a meteor.

"We're receiving reports across western PA and eastern OH of a loud boom and a fireball in the sky," the station wrote on X. "Our satellite data suggest it was possibly a meteor entering the atmosphere."

The station followed it up with a video taken by a station employee showing the fireball in the sky. Dozens of other videos emerged on social media of the meteor breaking up in the skies over Ohio.

NASA confirmed the details of the fireball. The American Meteor Society received reports from 10 states, District of Columbia, and Ontario, Canada. The fireball was sighted on Tuesday at 8:57 a.m. ET. NASA also confirmed the satellite imagery.

"An analysis of all currently available data places first visibility of the meteor at an altitude of 50 miles above Lake Erie, off the beaches of Lorain in northern Ohio," NASA said.

NASA added that the fireball—which was caused by a small asteroid nearly 6 feet in diameter and weighing about 7 tons—moved east of south at 40,000 miles per hour, and then traveled over 34 miles through the upper atmosphere before fragmenting 30 miles over Valley City, north of Medina.

"The fragments continued on to the south, producing meteorites in the vicinity of Medina County, Ohio," the space agency said.

The statement also explained the sonic boom.

"The asteroid unleashed an energy of 250 tons of TNT when it fragmented, resulting in a pressure wave which propagated to the ground, causing the booms and explosive noises heard by many of the public. It may have also shook houses north of Medina. We thank the American Meteor Society for providing the eyewitness accounts."

How the Fireball Was Tracked

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) explained in a 2018 article how the GLM satellites—typically used to track lightning strikes—can also be used to spot meteor fireballs. These fireballs, also called bolides, are larger meteoroids that can be as bright or brighter than the full moon when they burn up in the atmosphere.

GLM satellites take 500 images of the earth's surface every second. Lightning strikes are usually less than a millisecond in duration, but bolide flashes are slightly longer; they mimic the light patterns of a lightning strike with continuing current, in which the cloud continues to glow for tens of milliseconds as lightning transfers charge to the ground.

The rapid-fire images allow the GLM to track the change in brightness of the meteor vaporizing in the atmosphere, so long as the visual magnitude of the meteor measures at minus 14, slightly brighter than the full moon.