Meteor over New England prompts booms and sightings

A meteor over Massachusetts during the weekend ultimately prompted reports of booms and sightings across New England into Canada.

The American Meteor Society said that the meteor in question was about 3ft (1 meter) wide as it entered the atmosphere around the New Hampshire border with Massachusetts, north of Boston.

Officials with the US space agency Nasa confirmed that the meteor was natural material, not a satellite or space debris – and that it entered the atmosphere at 2.06pm on Saturday.

Robert Lunsford, the American Meteor Society program monitor, said the group received dozens of reports from Delaware to Montreal with people either hearing a double boom, feeling the ground shake or seeing the fireball – which he said looked like a shooting star in the daytime sky.

The double boom reportedly shook buildings across Massachusetts into Rhode Island. A dashboard camera in New York captured the meteor streaking across the sky there.

“It was definitely bigger than a normal fireball, about a yard wide,” he said.

But Lunsford said it was unlikely the meteor struck the ground.

“We would need more information about the trajectory, the speed and other aspects to know for sure if it hit the ground – but if it didn’t burn up, then it would have landed in the ocean,” he said. “Most of them do burn up before they hit the ground.”

Nasa spokesperson Allard Beutel said the meteor was travelling at about 75,000 mph (120,700 km/h) and likely fragmented about 40 miles (60km) above the ground.

Meteors travel faster than the speed of sound, creating pressure waves as they burn and break apart in the atmosphere. That can produce a loud sonic boom that those on the ground can hear.

Nasa estimated that the energy released when the meteor on Saturday broke up was equivalent to about 300 tons of TNT, accounting for the booms.

People in a handful of states posted on social media about feeling the buildings they were in shaking. Several videos on the X platform captured what sounded like two quick booms, with no fire, smoke or other visual causes.

Several people filed reports with the US Geological Survey, registering the shaking they felt with the National Earthquake Information Center, agency spokesperson Steve Sobie confirmed.

The agency opened an event page, based on the number of “Did you feel it?” reports it received on its website. But Sobie said there was no event registered on the agency’s seismographs – meaning the shaking was not due to an earthquake.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed reporting