Meteor rain over US

[paralleloscope]

Within the last few hours there have been over 150 reports of fireballs on AMS from all over the east coast. Judging by the many streaks on NOAA's online radar service it seems the fireballs were coming in over the east coast moving west.

 

[paralleloscope]

Here's the radar: http://radar.weather.gov/Conus/pacnorthwest_loop.php

 

[Lilou]

Just to clarify, for those who may not be familiar with the terrain of the maps above - the first four are the West coast of the USA (northern end) and the last is the Mid West (the southern end).

Thanks for posting this Parellel. The pictures seem to make it more real and drive home, that these raindrops are starting to pick up, even if not seeing anything personally. YIKES!!

 

[1984]

Here is the LunarMeteoriteHunters website sighting info:

http://www.sott.net/article/271889-Breaking-Meteor-outburst-over-6-Northeastern-US-states-Connecticut-New-York-New-Hampshire-New-Jersey-Massachusetts-and-Maine-so-far

 

[mkrnhr]

I'm not familiar with this radar map here _http://fireballs.ndc.nasa.gov/ where circles locate known meteor shower radiants, but it seems to me (subjective) that there is a cluster of meteor activity in the direction of the Cancer constellation.

 

[Aithin Tusa Fein]

Today: Meteor Bursts and Fires, Are They Connected?

Ok, I just read the following article on SOTT: http://www.sott.net/article/271889-Breaking-Meteor-outburst-over-6-Northeastern-US-states-Connecticut-New-York-New-Hampshire-New-Jersey-Massachusetts-and-Maine-so-far

I found this article very interesting because, today, I just finished my run and sat down at my computer to listen to the SOTT radio show while I was drinking my water. I was about 45 minutes into the show when I started listening to it. I was probably sitting there for about 10 minutes when my daughter come into my office and told me that the yard was filled with smoke. I went outside and found the yard covered in extremely thick smoke. Visibility was limited beyond about 25 meters. The wind was strong and traveling an a northeasterly direction. I knew from the color and odor of the smoke this was a grass fire and it was close, within 500 meters. With the strong, steady wind speed this thing was going to spread quick. So, I ran down to the road to see if I could spot the point of origin of the smoke. Was it on my side of the street or the opposite side? When I got to the road I could tell that it was on the opposite side. I yelled up to my wife who was on the porch and had her call 911. I then ran down the road, about 500 meters, located the point of origin of the bellowing smoke, ran up the driveway and assisted an elderly couple fight the fire that was quickly approaching their house. Long story short, I fought that fire for about 30 minutes before the fire department arrived and then helped them fight it for two more hours. So, once it was contained I went back home, took a shower, doctored my injuries and checked the local news, where I read this article: http://www.news9.com/story/24427977/oklahoma-firefighters-battling-multiple-grass-fires

Here is the interesting thing, by the way all the fires that happened today are not listed in this article, the fire I fought did not start near a road, or anywhere where there was human activity. It started in a pasture, where no humans were, and spread rapidly in a northeast direction, due to the wind speed. About 1000 meters west of this fire another fire broke out. These two fires were not related and were separated by two roads. The firefighters that arrived were swamped and the truck that arrived ran out of water after five minutes. We literally had to use garden hoses, shovels and wet cloths to fight the fire to prevent it from catching on to the juniper trees, which, if it did, would have gone up like gasoline and enabled it to jump the road.

I can say this from my experience, the fire I fought was not started by a human being. Not a campfire, lightning, cigarette butt, or any of the usual suspects. Based on the meteorite article and the number of fires today I strongly think that a small pebble-size meteorites combined with the strong wind started these fires.

So, just something to keep in mind and make preparations for.

If these fires are meteorite caused, depending on their numbers, they WILL overwhelm the fire department, which would normally respond promptly.

So just in case this happens to anyone else, you might want to consider the following:

- Invest in garden hoses
- Wet a t-shirt and put it over your mouth and nose to minimize smoke inhalation
- If you can put on pants and a long sleeve shirt then soak them down (take it from me don't wear jogging shorts you will get burned)
- If you can get all the leaves out of your gutters, flying embers will ignite them and your roof could catch on fire without your knowing it until its too late. If you can't then saturate your gutters with water to wet the leaves that are inside.
-If you have any cedar, pine, or juniper trees, try to keep the fire from getting to them. Because of their resin they will burn like gasoline and that will quickly catch on to other trees. Trust me this is very fast. This will turn a grass fire to a forest fire.

 

[Mr. Premise]

Here is the LunarMeteoriteHunters website sighting info:

http://www.sott.net/article/271889-Breaking-Meteor-outburst-over-6-Northeastern-US-states-Connecticut-New-York-New-Hampshire-New-Jersey-Massachusetts-and-Maine-so-far

Interesting. I heard an overhead explosion last night in north central Massachusetts. I was having a smoke on the porch, so I was outside. I don't know what these things are supposed to sound like but it was loud, above ground but didn't sound to high above the ground.

 

[mada85]

I don't know if this is related to the US sightings. On Friday morning (10 January) at about 10:00 GMT here in the south east UK I observed three distinct trails in the sky, one of which split into two at a single point. Whatever created these trails was clearly travelling from east to west. The trails began approximately above London, maybe somewhat further west. They were at 90 degrees to the direction in which the clouds were travelling. I'm not good at estimating atmospheric heights (clouds, planes, etc.) but these trails were higher than the clouds which were quite low. I also observed jet trails in the sky at the same time, and these three trails were much shorter than the jet trails quite different in form, more like the trail left by the Chelyabinsk meteor.

 

[Cosmos]

Within the last few hours there have been over 150 reports of fireballs on AMS from all over the east coast. Judging by the many streaks on NOAA's online radar service it seems the fireballs were coming in over the east coast moving west.

Hey parallel, could you give us the direct source link to those NOAA online radar pictures?

 

[Niall]

Within the last few hours there have been over 150 reports of fireballs on AMS from all over the east coast. Judging by the many streaks on NOAA's online radar service it seems the fireballs were coming in over the east coast moving west.

Hey parallel, could you give us the direct source link to those NOAA online radar pictures?

It looks like Parallel took screenshots of the radar loop, which only plays back the most recent hour or two. I'm trying to find archived footage...

Ok, I just read the following article on SOTT: http://www.sott.net/article/271889-Breaking-Meteor-outburst-over-6-Northeastern-US-states-Connecticut-New-York-New-Hampshire-New-Jersey-Massachusetts-and-Maine-so-far

I found this article very interesting because, today, I just finished my run and sat down at my computer to listen to the SOTT radio show while I was drinking my water. I was about 45 minutes into the show when I started listening to it. I was probably sitting there for about 10 minutes when my daughter come into my office and told me that the yard was filled with smoke. I went outside and found the yard covered in extremely thick smoke. Visibility was limited beyond about 25 meters. The wind was strong and traveling an a northeasterly direction. I knew from the color and odor of the smoke this was a grass fire and it was close, within 500 meters. With the strong, steady wind speed this thing was going to spread quick. So, I ran down to the road to see if I could spot the point of origin of the smoke. Was it on my side of the street or the opposite side? When I got to the road I could tell that it was on the opposite side. I yelled up to my wife who was on the porch and had her call 911. I then ran down the road, about 500 meters, located the point of origin of the bellowing smoke, ran up the driveway and assisted an elderly couple fight the fire that was quickly approaching their house. Long story short, I fought that fire for about 30 minutes before the fire department arrived and then helped them fight it for two more hours. So, once it was contained I went back home, took a shower, doctored my injuries and checked the local news, where I read this article: http://www.news9.com/story/24427977/oklahoma-firefighters-battling-multiple-grass-fires

Nuts!

Good job handling the situation.

Wildfires aren't normal this time of the year, right?

 

[paralleloscope]

Hey parallel, could you give us the direct source link to those NOAA online radar pictures?

It looks like Parallel took screenshots of the radar loop, which only plays back the most recent hour or two. I'm trying to find archived footage...

Yeah, I was just taking screenshots and I haven't been able to retrieve the archived footage which I think is looped in 10 minute interval .gifs
The site keeps the images a few hours in an 'recent cache', (which I didn't know then) : http://radar.weather.gov/ridge/RadarImg/N0R/FWS/
Otherwise one has to fetch and assemble the mosaic of the map; both the map and the radar ID data which are now exploded into 50+ different Radar ID's and separate downloads on each their winding file path, described here : http://forecast.weather.gov/jetstream/doppler/ridge_download.htm

Edit: Was wondering whether the streaks could have been contrails or radar anomalies, as they are still occurring (right now), though going in the opposite direction now, look over Florida:
http://radar.weather.gov/Conus/full_loop.php

 

[paralleloscope]

Made a screencast and then condensed a gif of the hour interval (you were right Kniall) between 1200-1300 @ UTC 01/13/2014 mentioned above :

 

[Niall]

Thanks!

Hmmm, these streaks are on a southwest-northeast axis.

The streaks in the stills you posted earlier are on a northeast-southwest axis...

 

[paralleloscope]

The streaks in the stills you posted earlier are on a northeast-southwest axis...

That's how I saw it too and it correlates with the report stream on AMS

Hmmm, these streaks are on a southwest-northeast axis.

That may be because the data has been shrunk (1 hour in 5 frames), to me when seeing it in the browser (and the screencapture doesn't capture it too well) the streams goes from Northwest to Southeast. The streaks on one frame are not visible on the next, like rain drops from frame to frame, where the densest blue part is the forward pointing bit, or that's what it seems like.

 

[MrEightFive]

Is it another meteor caught on meteo radar? This time in Vyazma, Smolensk region in Russia. Just noticed it today. Radar snapshot date: 21.01.2014 13:30 UTC.

http://meteoinfo.by/radar/?q=RUTW