[meteorite-list] Alaska Town Abuzz Over Mystery Sky Explosion

[Sterling K. Webb]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,475291,00.html

Alaska Town Abuzz Over Mystery Sky Explosion
Friday, January 02, 2009
 
FAIRBANKS, Alaska  -  Was it a meteor falling from space?
Officials think that might be what residents saw shooting through 
the Alaska sky near Tok on Monday afternoon.

A tremendous explosion, like a sonic boom, drew some people 
outside, where they watched irregular contrails scribe a path in a 
clear sky.

At her home four miles west of Tok, Kathy Olding was loading 
a large sled with firewood to haul to her house when she was 
startled by an explosion.

Peering out from the tarp-covered wood pile, she saw even 
her imperturbable Chesapeake Bay retriever, Journey, was 
on edge, ears cocked.

"I could kind of hear it still rumbling, like thunder," she recalled. 
"I thought, what in the world?"

Turning her eyes to the sky, Olding saw the oddest contrail.
"It was just like somebody took a pen and made a white 
cloud that went up and down and up and down and squiggly," 
she said, describing the pattern.

Others called 911.

Alaska State Troopers dispatcher Diane Kendall fielded 
several calls starting about 3:30 p.m. Most reported a 
loud explosion.

One caller, an adult, told Kendall an 11-year-old witnessed 
the entire spectacle outside.

"He said it was like a big fireball that exploded, with 
smoke everywhere," Kendall relayed. "The kid said, 
'I think it was a meteor,' and I went, right. The Martians 
have landed. But then I got three other calls, boom, 
boom, boom. I was pretty shocked."

People reported hearing and feeling an explosion in 
the air, but no one called in about debris falling from 
the sky, said Sgt. Freddie Wells, the state trooper on 
duty at the time.

Responding to the reports, he went out and cas is highly 
unusual for many, many Tokites to have heard this explosion," 
Olding wrote in an e-mail. "Does ANYONE know what it was? 
We are all dying to know."

News that the mysterious incident was likely a meteor was 
somewhat reassuring, laying to rest Martian theories.
"We're looking for UFOs around here," Sgt. Wells joked.
Chappelow said nearly all meteors that leave visible trails 
in the atmosphere are no bigger than a BB, and most are 
as tiny as a grain of sand.

The brightness comes from the speed with which meteors 
travel into the Earth's atmosphere.