Calls pour in after meteor siting
Photo
This black and white photo from a rooftop webcam released Thursday, April 15, 2010, by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences shows a fireball as it passed over Madison, Wis., Wednesday night. National Weather Service meteorologist David Sheets in Davenport, Iowa, says a meteor soared past about 10 p.m. local and appears to have disintegrated as it reached southwest Wisconsin. The meteor, also seen in Missouri, Illinois and Iowa, apparently didn't cause any damage.
JANESVILLE — Was it a plane crash near Parker High School?
Did an airliner blow up in the sky?
Thank goodness, neither report to the Rock County Communications Center on Wednesday night was true.
What callers saw about 10 p.m. Wednesday probably was a large meteor.
“It’s called the gamma virginids meteor shower, and the peak of that shower was April 14-15. So we’re right in that time frame,’’ said Penny Zabel, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sullivan.
Staff at the weather station near Milwaukee received about a dozen calls Wednesday night.
“We had lots of phone calls starting about 10:15 from people saying they’d seen a bright light in different colors—mostly green and yellow—across the sky around 10:06 to 10:07 p.m. Most were convinced it was a meteor, and a lot of them said they saw it break up as they saw it going across the sky,” Zabel said.
The Sullivan weather station also received calls from several county sheriffs’ offices plus from National Weather Service offices from Kansas City to Milwaukee, she said.
“We think maybe there was even a sighting in Michigan,’’ Zabel said.
Mark Elland, lead dispatcher at the Rock County Communications Center, said the center received many reports about the meteor from the public, police officers and a county deputy.
“Calls came in for up to 15 minutes with reports of something burning in the sky,’’ he said.
Elland was on his way to work southwest of Janesville when he saw a large glowing and burning object streak across the sky.
“It almost looked like a plane was on fire. But then it burned out,’’ he said.
Zabel said she was aware of a report of a meteor over Wisconsin about two months ago.
“It wasn’t nearly as well seen, and we didn’t get nearly the response from it we got tonight,’’ she said.
Some callers Wednesday even mentioned hearing a boom.
Others reported the ground shaking.
“The pieces were probably pretty small by the time they landed,’’ Zabel said.
Apr 16, 2010 at 5:10 p.m.
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Yes, the headline should read "sighting". Some fragments have already been found:
http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/e...
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The rock appears to be older than the Earth. Interestingly, though they've been observed for more than a century, it's only recently that the minor planets that are the source of the Gamma Virginids were identified. They likely broke apart by collision with another object and the ejecta are what falls to earth as meteors.
Apr 16, 2010 at 4:56 p.m.
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site (st)
n.
1. The place where a structure or group of structures was, is, or is to be located: a good site for the school.
2. The place or setting of something: a historic site; a job site.
3. A website.
tr.v. sit·ed, sit·ing, sites
To situate or locate on a site: sited the power plant by the river.
Fron the free dictionary
Apr 16, 2010 at 4:36 p.m.
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Siting? Isn't it sighting?
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