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Fire in the SkyS
A man used his camera phone to record a giant fireball in the sky.
He's not sure what it was, but plenty of other people are willing to take a guess.
"I just happened to catch something out of the corner of my eye," Bruce York said.
He said he was just driving along Route 26 at 5 p.m., when he noticed what looked like a fireball in the sky.
He grabbed his mobile phone and started recording.
"It didn't look like anything that I've ever seen before," York said. "It didn't look like any footage I've ever seen of a meteorite or a comet. It just struck me as odd."
He captured video of the strange happening for a little more than two-and-a-half minutes.
© KLTV
East Texas - A lot of East Texans are wanting answers Wednesday after a mysterious blast was heard over three counties.
Just after 10 p.m. Tuesday night, reports began to come into the KLTV 7 newsroom from Rusk, Harrison and Panola Counties of a monstrous blast that shook the ground and shot flames into the night sky.
"It was a big boom," says one Tatum resident.
"It felt as if it was a small scale earthquake," said another.
"An explosion and a big bright light," said another.
From Hallsville to Longview to Tatum, East Texans say they heard a huge explosion, then the ground began to shake.
"I thought it was thunder but it did not sound like thunder. It was a big loud boom, like it was an explosion," says Tatum resident Arely Ramos.
Many discounted a transformer blowing.
"It wasn't a transformer or Eastman flare thing going off, because we're used to hearing that. It literally shook our house. Shook it pretty hard, enough to startle all of us," says Hallsville homeowner Danielle Walker.
© Unknown
Dispatchers told FOX Carolina that the calls started coming into their call center around 10 p.m.
People in Chesnee, Gaffney, Pacolet, SC and Grover, NC all reported to FOX Carolina that they felt and heard an explosion.
Lt. Tony Ivey with the Spartanburg County Sheriff's Office said a firefighter in Chesnee noticed a small area next to the roadway that appeared to be the site of an explosion.
An investigator from the Hazardous Devices Unit responded to Henderson Road near Turkey Farm Road to investigate.
Robbie Buhl lives three miles from Henderson Road and felt his house shake and heard a loud boom Friday night. He said it's happened many times before and wants someone to figure out what's going on.
© Knowledgenuts.com
At Bart Rader's house in Ocean Pines, a loud boom "like somebody blew something up" preceded shaking so heavy that it rattled a 50-pound metal sculpture against the wall.
Miles away in Annapolis, Ocean City Mayor Rick Meehan was meeting in state Sen. James Mathias' office when he got a text message from his daughter: "What the heck was that?"
A series of tremors rattled residents across Ocean City and the lower Delmarva Peninsula around midday Thursday, puzzling geologists and emergency managers. Within a few hours, geologists ruled out an earthquake, and by Thursday evening, signs pointed to supersonic jets flying from the Patuxent Naval Air Station.
Air station officials said Friday two jets were in the air off the coast at the time the rumbling was felt, and that weather conditions made it likely that sonic booms could have traveled further than normal.
The phenomenon nevertheless mystified many, including Maykrantz.
"We've had sonic booms in town before, but this seemed different," said the firefighter and paramedic. "It was more sustained, and then there was a pause for about a minute and then it started again."
It wasn't a bird, or a plane, or Superman that streaked across the skies of Charlottetown last Friday night, but it was the colour of kryptonite and it was from out of this world.
Greg Tingman spotted the green light streaking across the sky behind the Charlottetown Mall Friday.
"I was kind of excited that I had my camera on. It was pointed in the right direction. We were on a road with a bit of an upward incline so definitely all good timing," he said.
He shot the above video on his car's dashboard camera - a camera he only received at Christmas time after seeing a massive meteor hit Russia last February.
"Saw that on the news and YouTube and thought it might be neat to have my own camera so my daughter bought it for me for Christmas," he said.
Greg Tingman spotted the green light streaking across the sky behind the Charlottetown Mall Friday.
"I was kind of excited that I had my camera on. It was pointed in the right direction. We were on a road with a bit of an upward incline so definitely all good timing," he said.
He shot the above video on his car's dashboard camera - a camera he only received at Christmas time after seeing a massive meteor hit Russia last February.
"Saw that on the news and YouTube and thought it might be neat to have my own camera so my daughter bought it for me for Christmas," he said.
Snapshot from Maryland Geological Survey (Maryland Geological Survey / February 6, 2014)
"The data is very inconsistent with any kind of earthquake activity," Maryland Geological Survey Director Richard Ortt said. That was because the timing of the tremor's detection by various sensors did not match the time it would be expected to take for a seismic event to ripple through the Earth's crust, he said.
The source of the tremors remains unknown, Ortt said. Sometimes sonic booms, explosions or other blasts can be confused with earthquakes, he said.
Air station spokeswoman Connie Hempel said the Navy conducted two supersonic flights off the coast Thursday, though she did not know what time they were scheduled for.
Residents of the beach resort town reported hearing a loud boom and feeling earthquake-like tremors shortly before noon.
"We have had reports that people felt tremors," said an Ocean City police spokeswoman, who estimated that the department had fielded more than a dozen calls as of noon.
© WikipediaSeismographic reading.
A little after 10 on Tuesday evening, Twitter blew up with messages about the earthquake. People also called the media with the report. The messages claimed it was a big one, too.
Most of the tremors were felt in a relatively small area, but reports also came from Drenthe and south-east Friesland. Richard van Dijk, a resident from Loppersum, where earthquakes are frequently experienced from the fracking by NAM in the area, reported that the front of his house was sinking.
On Twitter, residents from Ulrum, Middelstum and Loppersom said they felt tremors. People living further away like Groningen, Assen and Haulerwijk, reportedly felt "quakes".
Expert Theo Jurriens from the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen expects that it was not a meteor, because there were no messages from eye witnesses. "Then it would have been a big one, and that we would have seen", he said around midnight. According to the NOS, the KNMI will still investigate this possibility.
"Possibly, it was a jet passing through the sound barrier", Theo says.
Defense claims no responsibility for the bang. "But it is not clear. It could be an aircraft from another country that was flying above the North Sea" Jurriens says.
In 1992, the bang of a jet was heard, but nothing was seen, and even the church got damaged.
© Michael Potter
Could it be visitor from space or perhaps an experimental delta-wing aircraft from Culdrose or beyond?
It was snapped by accident and only discovered when Michael Potter reviewed his photographs of Mounts Bay on his computer.
He said: "I uploaded it to my laptop and decided to delete it because of the apparent sunspot over part of the image.
File photo of a meteor fireball
Tannerite targets can be bought over-the-counter at sporting goods stores, usually in half-pound or pound jars. However, bulk exploding tannerite targets are available online.
Justin Watkins, 28, fired off 20 pounds of tannerite Saturday afternoon. Watkins says he and many neighbors in the area shoot off the loud, exploding targets in the woods. Tannerite targets are perfectly legal, if used properly.
"We spent close to $100 on just 20 pounds of (tannerite)," said Watkins.
Neighbors were certainly shocked by Saturday's blast and the series of explosions heard intermittently over the last few weeks.
"It was like an explosion and it startled us. It shook the house, and we weren't sure what it was," said Beth Wilson, who was rattled after the big boom on Saturday.
Comment: All the 'booms' cannot be attributed to exploding tannerite because they don't fit the description of loud booms that "shake houses" and are heard "around the county and beyond". Here are two videos of 20 pounds of tannerite exploding:
It's quite loud, and indeed it could shake a nearby house, but it's not going to be heard for miles around and it's not going to startle people if they're used to tannerite going off.
© Twitter/Steffany_rm
One Twitter user said they saw it from the hills of Angeloplis "perfectly."
Another said they saw it in Puebla.
"It crossed the entire sky from south to west," said another user.
Sightings were also reported in Morella. Sky Alert said that sightings have been reported in eight states and the federal district."It was a streak of light moving at high speed," said Andres Olmos in Morella. "It was huge!"
Comment: Wow, the media has bought this line about military jets and 'frost quakes', hook, line and sinker!
From Meteorites, Asteroids, and Comets: Damages, Disasters, Injuries, Deaths, and Very Close Calls: