Wednesday saw the impact of a meteor weighing approximately 1,000 pounds and measuring two feet wide in South Texas.
According to Dallas’ Fox affiliate KDFW, the meteor exploded as it descended through the stratosphere and landed somewhere near McAllen, Texas at around 6 p.m.
Although meteorites enter Earth’s atmosphere at high velocities, they decelerate significantly and fragment before they reach the ground. According to NASA, “meteorites cool off quickly and pose no threat to the public.”
The space agency reported the incident online and included a map of the area where meteor fragments were most likely to have fallen.
In a video obtained by a home security camera and published by KDFW, birds can be seen and heard fleeing in response to a loud boom.
Several witnesses west of McAllen reported seeing what may have been a meteor, according to the National Weather Service in Brownsville/Rio Grande Valley. The meteor’s light was caught on camera by a Geostationary Lightning Mapper just before 5:30 p.m., the meteorological service said.
According to the NWS’s Facebook post from this past Wednesday, which cited data from the lightning mapper satellite, no thunderstorms were in the vicinity at the time of the meteor’s impact.
After hearing from Houston air traffic controllers that two planes had seen a meteor above the McAllen area, Hidalgo County Sheriff Eddie Guerra tweeted about it.
According to NASA, the meteor seen over McAllen serves as a reminder of the need to “increase our understanding and protection of Earth, to combine scientific and engineering expertise to advance human space exploration, to integrate terrestrial and planetary research for furthering our understanding of the solar system,” and to “promote successful space missions by mitigating risk.”
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