Meteor in Michigan
NASA Confirms “Rare” Meteor Burst in Southeastern Michigan
Kurt Strazdins and Kurt Strazdins
Graphic of a meteor flying through the sky.
January 18, 2018
Videos swarming the internet of a high speed incoming light that illuminated the sky plummeting into southeastern Michigan.
“I didn’t know about it until the day after. I felt the ground shake, but I didn’t think anything of it. I wasn’t expecting it, and I really wish we could’ve known about it because it would have been a great sight,” senior Tamara Marceta said.
Marceta was correct when she said she felt the ground shake because the meteor caused a 2.0 Earthquake that was felt throughout the Great Lakes Region. Truly a surprise to locals as the light contacted the ground giving a large “BOOM.” Some thought it may have been a lightning strike. After the incident that happened in Hawaii this past week of a false alarm nuclear warning others maybe thought North Korea finally pulled the trigger and launched a nuclear missile.
“I was shoveling snow when it happened,” junior Foster Krause said. “I was shocked because you never see these things in Michigan.”
According to some research, this was not the first time Michigan has been hit by a meteor. In 1919 a meteor fell into Lake Michigan that caused an big cities like Battle Creek, Kalamazoo, South Bend, and Grand Haven.
According to NASA 100 tons of dust and sand sized particles slam into the Earth every day. Sizes vary, from the size of sand, to the size of a car. NASA’s head of the Meteoroid Environment Office Bill Cooke said, “It was definitely a meteor.” Cooke said the fireball was caused by a small asteroid about one to two yards in diameter, moving at 28,000 mph. When it entered the atmosphere, he said, it heated up and began to melt away, producing the bright light that people saw. “For an area like Michigan, it’s very rare,” said Cooke.
The head of Astronomy at the Cranbrook Museum in Detroit, Michigan says that some fragments of the meteor may have landed in Mt. Clemens, Michigan. If you find a meteorite your piece could be worth anything around 50 cents, or up to two million dollars depending on the size of the piece. So good luck on your treasure hunt!