[meteorite-list] Radar signatures associated with the VA Beach Fireball, 29 Mar 09

[Fries, Marc D]

That's supposed to be NNE, not NEN.   SSE instead of SES, too.  duh


On 4/1/09 11:40 AM, "Fries, Marc D" <marc.d.fries at jpl.nasa.gov> wrote:

> Howdy ladies and gents
> 
>     I have looked over the radar data from the VA Beach fireball this past
> Sunday (I¹m calling it VA Beach because that was the location of the closest
> eyewitness).  I believe there is a consistent debris trail in the data.
> This track in the data evolves over a forty minute period and trends towards
> the ESE, while all the clouds in the radar data move in a ENE to NEN
> direction.  Either the debris was generated below the jet stream or we
> over-estimated the effects of the jet stream, but that is something for me
> to figure out later on.
> 
>     Here is my data from that meteor.  Click on each image for a
> description:
> 
> http://s653.photobucket.com/albums/uu251/mfries/
> 
>     The available eyewitnesses converge well as to the direction of the
> fireball.  Note that the VA Beach astronomers estimate the distance ­ the
> last radar return is only 20 km removed from their estimate.  The debris
> trail appears mostly over the Chesapeake, but the farthest downrange portion
> crosses the Delmarva peninsula near the town of Johnsontown.  The western
> end of the track (i.e. the first radar data to appear) also appears over
> land (just barely) near Stingray Point, VA.  Note that this is uncorrected
> for wind drift.  Surface winds were out of the SES at 5mph with 20 mpg gusts
> (from Norfolk, VA met data), and I placed a crude correction of 3.3 mi on my
> Google Earth image (5mph over 40 minutes after the fireball reports).
> Basically, the position of the debris cloud should indicate a northeastern
> limit for the actual position of fallen meteorites.
> 
>     My brother hasn¹t had a chance to look this over yet; I¹m jumping ahead
> of him a bit because I¹m reasonably convinced that I¹m looking at a meteor
> trace in the data.
> 
>     Disclaimer: Be advised that this information comes with no guarantees of
> any kind and represents my interpretation only.  This is provided for
> information purposes only, and neither I nor JPL assume liability for costs
> and/or personal harm that may arise from personal decisions based on this
> information.
> 
> Cheers,
> MDF
> 
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