Sonic boom from a meteor shakes Ohio and Pennsylvania
Sonic boom from a meteor shakes Ohio and Pennsylvania
KABOOM! Did you hear it? Around 9 a.m. EDT on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 2026, residents of Ohio and Pennsylvania began flooding the 911 line with reports of an “earthquake like” explosion. The National Weather Service out of Pittsburgh was quick to report:
We’re receiving reports across western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio of a loud boom and a fireball in the sky. Our satellite data suggest it was possibly a meteor entering the atmosphere.
And the National Weather Service out of Cleveland followed up with data confirming the meteor. Looking at satellite imagery from the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM), you can see a bright streak over the Cleveland area that would be consistent with a meteor entering the atmosphere. NWS Cleveland said:
The latest GLM imagery (1301Z) does suggest that the boom was a result of a meteor.
So satellites saw the bright flash of a meteor entering Earth’s atmosphere near Cleveland, Ohio.
Some people also saw the daylight fireball
The American Meteor Society has more than 100 meteor reports pending from Ohio, Pennsylvania and as far away as Virginia and Canada. The reports all seem to be describing the same event. One observer, Nicole T., recounts both seeing the fireball and hearing it. Nicole wrote:
The low rumbles I heard were maybe a minute or two after if disappeared.
Alec H., reporting from Cincinnati, Ohio, saw the meteor but didn’t hear the sonic boom. Alec wrote:
It was cool looking, felt like that Russian meteor video without any boom.
Maybe you also remember the Chelyabinsk meteor that broke apart over Russia on February 15, 2013? It was a small asteroid with an estimated size of 65 feet (20 meters) that grabbed the attention of many as it sailed overhead. As people rushed to look at it out their windows, the resulting sonic boom shattered glass and injured observers. So far it doesn’t appear there are any such reports with the Cleveland meteor.
Video of the fireball
Some dash cams and security cameras caught the fireball entry. Check out the video below. The meteor enters the field of view toward the end of the 22-second video.
A News 5 viewer sent this video of the meteor burning up over Northeast Ohio.
— News 5 Cleveland (@news5cleveland.bsky.social) 2026-03-17T14:27:37.654Z
And here’s the view from a dash cam:
Someone in PA caught the Cleveland meteor on his dashcam driving towards NE Ohio.Source: x.com/hankf330togo…
And you can listen to the boom in this video:
A meteor hit Cleveland?????? From a friend:
Will it leave behind debris – meteorites – that hunters can pick up? We’ll let you know if we get reports!
Bottom line: Did you see or hear it? A sonic boom from a meteor shook parts of Ohio and Pennsylvania on Tuesday morning. People saw the fireball as far away as Canada and Virginia.
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