Did you see it? Possible meteor breaks up over skies between Tahoe and Carson City
Submitted by Jeff Munson on Wed, 07/27/2016 - 8:48pm
Carson City Sheriff's Office dispatch received multiple 911 calls Wednesday night reporting a large object, likely to be a meteor, that broke up over the skies above Carson City. Locally, the debris was seen as far west as Lake Tahoe and into the Mound House, Dayton and Brunswick Canyon areas.
Carson City dispatch reports receiving several 911 calls beginning at around 9:40 p.m. News reports suggest Thursday that it was a rocket that broke apart as it entered into the atmosphere.
Reports coming in say the fireball was spotted throughout Northern California and in central, eastern and southern Nevada. According to SpaceWeather.com, the meteor debris is likely from the summer's first big meteor shower, the Delta Aquarids, which peaks this week. This shower will be followed by the annual Perseid meteor shower. Forecasters expect the shower to peak on August 11-13 with as many as 200 Perseids per hour. For now, Earth is in the outskirts of the debris stream and rates are still low, according to the website. This will change as July turns into August and peak night approaches.
"Honestly, with the crazy terrorist attacks happening in the world recently my family and I thought we had witnessed a passenger plane get shot down," said Matthew Gibson of Carson City who provided the video below.
A witness in South Lake Tahoe reports that it was a slow moving object that broke into several pieces as it streamed east toward Carson City.
"It was (moving) so slow that I thought it was a helicopter flashing a light or spot light and then it broke into two pieces," said Raquel Gonzalez-Rivera of Carson City who was in South Lake Tahoe.
Go here for video provided by Carson Now reader Jesse Chavez. Go here for a video from a Dayton reader, which does contain adult language.
Have a photo to share? Send to jeff@carsonnow.org.
