[meteorite-list] Meteor Rocks Missouri Residents

[Ron Baalke]

http://freeinternetpress.com/article.pl?sid=04/06/20/0542230&mode=thread

Car-Sized Meteor Rocks Missouri Residents
Free Internet Press
June 19, 2004
 
Paul Kesterson was getting ready for work Friday morning when two 
thunderous explosions a split second apart rocked the sky above his 
home.

"It was loud enough to shake the house and rattle the windows," said 
Kesterson, owner of Marshfield TV and Electronics. "The dog's probably 
still hiding."

The rural Webster County man rushed outside, not sure what he'd find.

"There was a smoke trail in the sky, but it wasn't straight," he said. 
"It kind of came down at an angle, like a jet contrail that the wind 
had distorted."

The Webster County Sheriff's Department fielded nearly 20 phone calls 
from area residents around 9:20 a.m., concerned something had blown up.

Dispatchers checked with area quarries, which reported no blasting 
activity.

And no supersonic aircraft were in the skies above Webster County, 
according to Springfield airport and Fort Leonard Wood officials.

NASA scientist Mike Mumma said the likely culprit was a "sizable" 
meteor ripping apart as it blasted through the atmosphere at 100,000 
mph.

"From the description of buildings and windows shaking, that's a 
fairly significant sonic boom," said Mumma, chief scientist of 
planetary research at Goddard Research Center in Greenbelt, Md. "It 
would have been much larger than fist-sized to make that loud of a 
noise and generate that much energy. I couldn't speculate how big, 
though."

Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near Earth Object monitoring program 
in Pasadena, Calif., said a meteor that shakes homes and windows 
could have been the size of a small car.