Fireballs
SmithtownRadio.com calls into Suffolk police and other emergency officials all resulted in the same answer: no one is sure but the thought is the noise was a really loud clap of thunder with an associated lightning strike.
At 9:46 p.m., the National Weather Service issued a Special Weather Statement regarding a snow squall moving onshore near Northport. The squall - which is a quick-forming, storm cell much like a summertime pop-up thunderstorm - was expected to impact shoreline communities stretching eastward towards Port Jefferson Station. SmithtownRadio.com has received listener comments indicating the noise was heard from Kings Park to Nesconset and into Centereach.
Meteorologist Mike Leona, who is the Long Island Weather Examiner for examiner.com, posted on his Facebook page that he thought the mysterious noise was likely thunder - but he too could not say fore sure. In his post, he said lightning detectors at Sikorsky Airport in Bridgeport and Republic Airport in Farmingdale both detected activity in the area of the squall line.
Dawn Ratcliffe, 30, of Milward Road, posted on a popular UFO spotting website when she saw the strange phenomena out of her window at around 10pm on Saturday, January, 26.
She was hoping other users of ufo-uk.co.uk might be able to offer an explanation as to what it was - and since then a host of people - from as far north as Lancashire - have come forward to confirm they too saw the spectacle - though its cause remains a mystery.
Dawn originally wrote: "I was sat on the floor in the living room talking to my boyfriend, facing the window, when outside I saw a massive white flash that lit up the whole sky. It only lasted a split second. It was like it had come from a ball of light, not like lightning. It definitely wasn't a firework and we went straight outside to see If there was anything out there or an aeroplane or something, but the sky was clear. It was such an intense bright white flash."
Site users immediately responded to Dawn's post.
The unidentified jelly-like substance has been found at the RSPB Ham Wall Nature reserve in Somerset.
And according to folklore, a similar slime known as 'astral jelly' is deposited after meteor showers.
The jelly has turned up at the park just three days after a giant meteor streaked over the city of Chelyabinsk in central Russia.
Tony Whitehead, an RSPB spokesman for the South West, said: "Although we don't know what it actually is, similar substances have been described previously.
"In records dating back to the 14th Century it's known variously as star jelly, astral jelly or astromyxin.
"In folklore it is said to be deposited in the wake of meteor showers."
Comment: There's been a dramatic increase of fireballs around the planet in the last few days. For more information about what might be coming down the pike in the near future read: Comets and the Horns of Moses by Laura Knight-Jadczyk
20 January 2013 - Ellen Musahino, Tokyo, Japan 3:40 a.m.
2-3 seconds duration. East, very bright yellowish white. There was a flash and then a diving star bright as the moon with a long and beautiful tail. Little sparks along the tail. It was bright enough to be confused with the flash of a camera in a dark room.20 January 2013 - A Shorb Nasu, Tochigi, Japan 2:42 JST
Around 5 seconds duration. Travelling West to East. A large flash of light like lightning followed by a bluish-green ball. Maybe as bright as the moon? It seemed very close. I've found some Youtube videos of the meteor, taken from from near Tokyo:
He said he and his wife saw the streak as they were driving on Highway 1 north of Monterey. "It first appeared as a quick movement of sorts, maybe similar to a shooting star or quick lightning strike off to the east."Then, Rivas said, "it grew into "something shaped like a giant orange crayon."
Others described what they had seen on the American Meteor Society website.
Several witnesses are describing an object with a fiery green tail that flew across the skyline. David Landry was in Dartmouth when he watched the bright object hurtle across the sky over the Halifax bridges and towards the west shortly after 11 a.m. [?]
He said the object was "much bigger and closer" than any meteorite he had ever seen before.
Moments later people in western Nova Scotia reported hearing the booms and seeing flashes of light.
Shortly after 11 p.m. people from Liverpool to Yarmouth County and beyond reported seeing flashes of light and hearing booms. Some reported hearing two booms, a large boom followed by a smaller boom.
Unlike a lightning bolt, this flashing bluish light was reported to last for more than 30 seconds and the "thunder" was heard and felt for more than 100 miles.

We know that noctilucent clouds like these form from meteor dust, but so can weather in the lower troposphere.
But until recently it was thought that a 33-foot-wide (10-meter-wide) meteor crashing through Earth's upper atmosphere would have little effect.
Now an unlikely team of researchers and a million-to-one observance of such an event are telling another story: When meteors vaporize in our atmosphere, they leave behind much more debris than scientists previously thought.
This cosmic dust may, in turn, affect our planet's atmosphere.
Comment: Cosmic/meteor dust can do far more than affect our weather. See also:
Chemtrails, Disinformation and the Sixth Extinction

Based on intriguing accounts by Spanish and French explorers in 1564, University of North Florida physics professor emeritus Jay Huebner (above) believes that a strike by a meteor, comet or asteroid could have formed Round Marsh in the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve. He's trying to raise funds for an expedition to discover the truth.
On land, the hungry, miserable French settlers at Fort Caroline were stunned by a "stroke of lightning" that, one wrote, instantly "consumed about 500 acres and burned with such a bright heat that the birds which lived in the meadows were consumed."
The fire burned for three days. The river "seemed almost to boil." Enough fish died to fill 50 carts.
A retired University of North Florida professor thinks the Spanish comet and the French lightning strike were very likely the same thing - an object from outer space that struck at the edge of the St. Johns River in Jacksonville.
It could have been a meteor, asteroid or comet 100 feet across, says UNF's Jay Huebner. Most of it would have vaporized on impact, with trees and animals incinerated in unimaginable heat. Water from the river and marsh would have made a roaring waterfall as it rushed to fill the crater left by the strike.
That crater, Huebner theorizes, is today's Round Marsh in the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve.
Comment: At least one eyewitness has reported that the loud boom came from a meteor:
Bright blue fireball reported across several states, including loud boom above New York, 19 March 2013