Did a Meteor Explode Over Pittsburgh?


By Azi Paybarah
, The New York Times. 

Excerpt: For Heather Lin Ishler, the first morning of 2022 in Dormont, a neighborhood just south of downtown Pittsburgh, began like most days had in 2021. ...Then, the bed shook. “The sensation,” Ms. Ishler, 34, later said, “reminded me of fireworks” and how, if you stand too close, you can feel “a rumbling in your chest.” ...“It was just the feeling of the shock wave,” Ms. Ishler recalled, “but no sound or flash or anything like that.” ...Diane Turnshek, an astronomer who lectures at Carnegie Mellon University, felt something powerful on Saturday morning, too. She was in her home atop a Pittsburgh hill, 1,120 feet above sea level. Her initial thought was that her dryer had fallen off the washing machine in the room next door. Calls started coming into the Pittsburgh office of the National Weather Service from people who had heard “a really loud sound but didn’t see anything,” said Jenna Lake, a Weather Service meteorologist. Soon, it seemed as if everyone was looking for answers. ...No earthquakes were detected by the seismograph at the nearby Allegheny Observatory, Ms. Turnshek said. ...Ms. Lake at the Weather Service said the air over Pittsburgh on Saturday was “too benign” for storms or lightning, so those were ruled out, too. ...For now, a meteor explosion is the best theory about what happened over Pittsburgh on Saturday, Ms. Lake said, though it will remain just that — a theory — “unless someone finds some rocks in their backyard,” she said.…

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