Fireball seen as meteorite streaks through sky over Georgia and South Carolina
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Diverging Reports Breakdown
Fireball seen as meteorite streaks through sky over Georgia and South Carolina
The American Meteor Society said it received more than 160 reports of a fireball sighting. The meteor was first seen at an altitude of 48 miles above the town of Oxford, Georgia. The fireball later exploded 27 miles above West Forest, Georgia, unleashing an energy of about 20 tons of TNT. The resulting pressure wave propagated to the ground, creating booms heard by many in that area, NASA said in a statement.
The American Meteor Society said it received more than 160 reports of a fireball sighting from observers in Georgia and South Carolina at 12:25 p.m. ET. The meteor was first seen at an altitude of 48 miles above the town of Oxford, Georgia, moving southwest at 30,000 miles per hour, said Bill Cooke, a lead at NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office.
The fireball later exploded 27 miles above West Forest, Georgia, unleashing an energy of about 20 tons of TNT. Cooke said the fireball was 3 feet in diameter and weighed more than a ton (2,000 pounds).
“The resulting pressure wave propagated to the ground, creating booms heard by many in that area,” Cooke said in a statement.
This NOAA satellite image, shared by NASA, shows where a meteorite streaked through the sky over Georgia. Sightings were also reported in neighboring South Carolina. NOAA/NASA
When a space rock enters the atmosphere on its own and burns up, it’s called a meteor. It’s a meteorite if it survives the trip and makes contact with the ground before burning up. Those that appear especially bright are called fireballs, according to NASA.
This daylight fireball on Thursday could be a member of the Beta Taurid meteor shower, which includes meteors that are rarely seen and are typically active from late June to early July, peaking around June 25, said Robert Lunsford of the American Meteor Society.
“I would estimate that we receive reports of one daylight event per month from all over the world,” Lunsford told CBS News. “I would say one out [of] every 700 fireball events involves a fireball seen during daylight hours. So these events are rare, and most people go a lifetime without seeing one.”
A fireball during the evening was seen over vast sections of the eastern U.S. and parts of Canada in February 2024.
Meteor seen over Georgia, Southeast
The American Meteor Society received about 100 reports of fireball sightings from across Georgia, North and South Carolina, and Tennessee. The fireball was produced by “an asteroidal fragment,” that measured 3-feet in diameter and weighed more than a ton. Several thousand of them occur in the atmosphere every day, but they often go unnoticed as they travel over oceans and uninhabited areas. A meteor is rock, dust, or debris that enters the earth’s atmosphere. The friction creates heat and we can see it burn up in the sky, a NASA spokesperson says. But during Thursday’s event, multiple Doppler weather radars detected the signatures of meteorites falling to the ground, he adds. The meteor was first seen shortly after noon about 48 miles above Oxford in Newton County, Georgia, according to the meteor society. It disintegrated 27 miles above West Forest, which is about a 25-minute drive from Oxford, and unleashed ‘an energy of about 20 tons of TNT,’ NASA says.
“(It looked like) a really huge firework, and then it just disappeared. We didn’t hear any bang or see any smoke or nothing,” Williams, 39, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Bill Cooke, lead of NASA’s Meteoroid Environments Office, described the event to the AJC as a meteor first seen shortly after noon about 48 miles above Oxford in Newton County. He said it traveled southwest at 30,000 mph.
It disintegrated 27 miles above West Forest, which is about a 25-minute drive from Oxford, and unleashed “an energy of about 20 tons of TNT,” he added.
The American Meteor Society received about 100 reports of fireball sightings from across Georgia, North and South Carolina, and Tennessee. Most of the reports were in Georgia, according to its website.
Dylan Lusk, a senior meteorologist with the Weather Service office in Peachtree City, said the object created a fireball and sonic boom as it entered the Earth’s atmosphere.
“We’ve had a lot of people who are reporting hearing a loud boom and then also feeling shaking, like their home shaking, or their window shaking,” Lusk said. “So that was likely a byproduct of whatever this was entering the atmosphere.”
The fireball was produced by “an asteroidal fragment,” Cooke said, that measured 3-feet in diameter and weighed more than a ton.
According to the meteor society, a fireball is just a term for a bright meteor. Several thousand of them occur in the atmosphere every day, but they often go unnoticed as they travel over oceans and uninhabited areas. Vivid colors are also often reported by observers and may be influenced by the composition of the meteoroid, the group said.
There have been many reports of a #fireball streaking across the southeastern U.S. this afternoon! The Geostationary Lightning Mapper (#GLM) on @NOAA’s #GOES satellites can occasionally detect these bright meteors (aka #bolides) when they pass through the atmosphere.
See the… pic.twitter.com/SeODhBdYiK — NOAA Satellites (@NOAASatellites) June 26, 2025
The NWS in Charleston, South Carolina, said on X that “satellite-based lightning detection shows a streak within cloud-free sky” near the North Carolina and Virginia border, visible on the NOAA satellites.
The NWS reported it was “likely a meteor, and they believe more could possibly be on the way,” the Newton County Sheriff’s Office posted to Facebook.
Lusk said the Weather Service received an unconfirmed report of possible bits crashing into someone’s home in Henry County around the time the fireball was spotted. According to NASA’s website, there was a probable meteorite fall near Blackville, which is about 2.5 miles south of McDonough in Henry.
Molly Porter, a spokesperson for NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama said, “meteorites are smaller ‘rocks’ from the meteor that reach the ground.”
Henry County’s fire department confirmed to the AJC they did not respond to any related calls.
Most of the object likely “burned up in the atmosphere,” Lusk said.
“The chances of something making it to the ground are usually pretty low. Usually, it’s going to burn up as it moves through the atmosphere with the speed that it’s coming in,” he added.
But during Thursday’s event, Porter said multiple Doppler weather radars detected the signatures of meteorites falling to the ground.
There are reports from across metro Atlanta of a probable meteor. A meteor is rock, dust, or debris from a comet’s trail that enters the earth’s atmosphere. The friction creates heat and we can see it burn up in the sky. This is likely what just happened here. pic.twitter.com/46ZJvgqGMv — Brad Nitz (@BradNitzWSB) June 26, 2025
Calls flooded into the Tellus Science Museum in Cartersville from residents intrigued by the bright streak, museum marketing associate Lauren Rhodes told the AJC.
In 2009, a similar sonic boom was heard by neighbors as a meteorite crashed and tore a hole into a roof and ceiling of a Cartersville home. No one was at the residence at the time. But the homeowner returned to find the 297-gram meteorite on the floor of the house and contacted the museum.
“It just so happened that Tellus had opened just months prior, and they knew that we had the mineral collection and that we also had astronomy and space items, and they reached out to the museum, and we acquired it,” Rhodes said.
The museum now has the meteorite on display at the Weinman Mineral Gallery, which features exhibits of some of the state’s most prized minerals.
At the time, it was only the 25th meteorite found in the state.
Rhodes said the museum has a fireball camera on its roof, and she hopes it captured Thursday’s event. The camera doesn’t report in real time, so they plan to look Friday morning once the data is processed.
“We’ve had people calling us about it,” she said. “It’s not guaranteed that we caught anything on it … so crossing our fingers.”
Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fireball-meteorite-georgia-south-carolina/