A loud boom heard over western Pennsylvania and northeastern Ohio was likely caused by a meteor, forecasters said.
Nearby residents flooded social media with concerned posts about the startling sound on Tuesday morning. One X user described hearing “the loudest boom” in northeastern Ohio, while another user compared it to “thunder or [a] jet engine misfiring loudly.”
As these reports rolled in, National Weather Service forecasters in Cleveland jumped on the case. Their office found that the latest imagery “does suggest that the boom was a result of a meteor.”
Forecasters in Pittsburgh also shared their analysis, along with a video of the meteor recorded by an employee.
“We're receiving reports across western PA and eastern OH of a loud boom and a fireball in the sky. Our satellite data suggest it was possibly a meteor entering the atmosphere,” the agency’s Pittsburgh office wrote on X.
Brian Mitchell, an observing program leader for the National Weather Service’s Cleveland office, told The Independent his office heard the boom around 9 a.m. local time.
He said forecasters used geostationary lightning mapping, which can detect “quick flashes in the atmosphere,” according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“It generated a flash, which showed up as a lightning flash on this particular map,” Mitchell explained.
“The speed of an object like that — it's similar to a military aircraft or something like that flying above the speed of sound, causing a sonic boom,” he added.
While it’s likely the meteor burned up as it entered the atmosphere, Mitchell expects some people will still be on the hunt for fragments.
“There could be some fragments in places, but we don't know that at this point,” he said.
Several witnesses in northeastern Ohio told Cleveland.com the boom caused their homes to shake.
One resident in Lakewood, a suburb of Cleveland, told the outlet the sound was “really loud and intense, like an explosion.” Another witness in nearby Strongsville reportedly described it as a “long explosion” that seemed to “echo for probably a good 30 seconds or more.”
Police in Avon, Ohio, even issued a statement after receiving multiple reports about the blast.
“If you do not have an emergency or any specific information about the source of this, please do not call 911 or our dispatch line as we are inundated with calls right now,” the Avon Police Department said on Facebook.
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