By Kerry Breen / CBS News
Updated on: March 17, 2026 / 8:55 PM EDT
An asteroid weighing about 7 tons and traveling at roughly 45,000 miles per hour streaked over multiple states and lit up the sky Tuesday morning as a bright meteor, officials said. The event, just before 9 a.m. ET, produced a loud boom that some residents mistook for an explosion.
NASA said eyewitnesses from 10 states, Washington, D.C., and Ontario reported the fireball. The National Weather Service office in Pittsburgh shared an employee’s video showing the meteor arcing across the sky. Witnesses in Ohio, New York and Pennsylvania reported hearing a powerful blast; one person told local media the boom shook their whole house.
NASA explained the sound was caused when the asteroid fragmented, creating a pressure wave that reached the ground. The agency estimated the fragmentation released energy equivalent to about 250 tons of TNT, and confirmed the blast would have been strong enough to rattle some homes.
The National Weather Service initially identified the object as a meteor. A geostationary lightning mapper (GLM) — an instrument normally used to continuously map lightning by detecting quick flashes in the atmosphere — also picked up the event. NWS shared GLM imagery showing a green flash over Cleveland, which supported the meteor explanation.
Data analysis indicates the object was first visible about 50 miles above Lake Erie off the coast of Lorain, Ohio. It moved east of south at about 45,000 mph, traveling more than 34 miles through the upper atmosphere before fragmenting over Valley City, Ohio. NASA said fragments likely scattered across Medina County; some tiny pieces reached the ground.
Bill Cooke, head of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office, estimated the meteor was about 6 feet in diameter and too small to have been tracked beforehand. He said it could have been a small asteroid from the asteroid belt or a fragment from a larger body, but its exact origin is unknown.
Ohio has seen other recent fireballs. In mid-February, one was captured on a doorbell camera, and another was recorded on March 15, local media reported.