Daytime fireball rattled residents in Ohio, Pennsylvania

A kaboom, a fireball and white streaks in the skies over Pennsylvania and Ohio - seen as far as Virginia and Canada - were recorded on Tuesday (March 17) morning, according to the National Weather Service and scientists.

Rattled residents dialed 911, and local emergency officials called the NWS wondering "what the heck?" at about 9 a.m. ET (1300 GMT), said Bill Modzelewski, an NWS meteorologist in Pittsburgh.

"We’re receiving reports across western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio of a loud boom and a fireball in the sky. Our satellite data suggest it was possibly a meteor entering the atmosphere," the NWS posted online.

Reuters confirmed the location from the buildings, walls and street layout which matched file and satellite imagery. Coordinates: 41.370756, -82.079507. NASA said that a meteor was detected on March 17 at 8:57 EDT/12:57 GMT. The date was also verified by corroborating visuals across Northeast Ohio.

"Moving east of south at 40,000 miles per hour, the fireball - caused by a small asteroid nearly 6 feet in diameter and weighing about 7 tons - traveled over 34 miles through the upper atmosphere before fragmenting 30 miles over Valley City, north of Medina," NASA said.

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

NASA said the small 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," it added. 

The booming sound was when the space object broke the sound barrier at a speed somewhere between 25,000 and 160,000 miles per hour, said Laurence Garvie, a research professor and curator of the Buseck Center for Meteorite Studies at Arizona State University. The American Meteor Society received more than 100 reports of sightings of the fireball, according to the online site EarthSky.

"I've been getting calls and texts all morning. This is very exciting for us," Garvie said. "They may just look like black stones on the ground, but you can actually hold something older than the Earth. Something from outer space. And we can learn new things from them." — Reuters/VBL, GMA Integrated News