Daytime meteor startles New England with loud boom

The meteor was visible across a wide stretch of the Northeast and Canada, and created a boom equivalent to about 300 tons of TNT.

New England residents were startled over the weekend when a meteor streaked across the sky and triggered a sonic boom in the middle of the day.

The rare daytime fireball appeared a little after 2 p.m. EDT on Saturday, entering Earth’s atmosphere just a few miles north of Boston. The American Meteor Society received dozens of reports, with sightings stretching as far as New York City, Baltimore, Montreal and Toronto.

In eastern Massachusetts, the sound of the meteor breaking apart in the atmosphere was even more startling than the brief flash in the sky, with a loud boom reported across the region.

"The meteor appears to have fragmented at an altitude of 40 miles over northeast MA and southeast NH," NASA said. "The energy released at breakup is estimated to be equivalent to about 300 tons of TNT, which accounts for the loud noise."

All of the fragments of the meteor splashed down in Cape Cod Bay, an event that NASA called a "fishy squisher."

The explosion was even picked up by the GOES-19 weather satellite, which carries an instrument designed to detect lightning. When that sensor registers a flash without a thunderstorm nearby, it can be a sign that a meteor has entered the atmosphere.

Meteors bright enough to be seen in broad daylight have been reported across the United States multiple times this year. In the weeks around the March equinox, there was a noticeable uptick in daytime sightings, including one observed across much of the Northeast on April 7.

"Meteors are actually quite common," NASA explained. "They occur all the time, and fireballs can be seen on any given night. But they often occur over the ocean or unpopulated areas with no witnesses, or during the daytime, making them difficult to spot."

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