Bright meteor streaking above Pittsburgh captured on cameras

Cameras in the Pittsburgh area captured a bright meteor streaking across the sky on Tuesday morning.

The National Weather Service's Pittsburgh office said it received reports from across western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio of loud booms and a fireball in the sky. Satellite data suggests it was caused by a meteor, the NWS said.

NASA said the asteroid, which was nearly six feet in diameter and weighed about seven tons, became visible at an altitude of 50 miles above Lake Erie. 

Zooming through the sky at 45,000 miles per hour, the fireball traveled more than 30 miles through the upper atmosphere before it broke apart near Medina, Ohio, releasing the energy of 350 tons of TNT and resulting in booms that were heard on the ground. Some people's homes even shook, NASA said.  

Where was the meteor seen? 

Allegheny County Emergency Services shared a video on social media from one of its security cameras, which captured the meteor at 8:56 a.m. Allegheny County said its 911 center received calls from around the county reporting a fireball in the sky.   

Jared Rackley, a National Weather Service employee, captured the meteor on camera from the Pittsburgh area. A camera in north Baldwin also captured the meteor around 9 a.m. 

KDKA has seen people reporting the meteor in areas like Hermitage, Oakmont, Clarion County and Pittsburgh's Oakland neighborhood. NASA said it also fielded reports of the fireball in Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New York, Virginia and D.C.

Chrissy Leichliter said she was sitting in traffic on the inbound side of the Parkway East when she saw it.

"I looked up and saw a giant burning fireball with a tail coming across the Parkway, and I literally thought I was seeing things," Leichliter said.

She said she called her husband, but he didn't believe her. 

"At first, I actually thought it was like a helicopter or something on fire going down, to be honest, because it just caught me off guard," she said.

What is a meteor? 

According to NASA, a meteor happens when a rock enters the Earth's atmosphere at high speeds and burns up. If a meteor survives its trip to the ground, it's called a meteorite. Scientists estimate that about 48.5 tons of meteoritic material falls on Earth every day, though almost all of it is vaporized in the atmosphere, leaving behind trails that we call shooting stars. 

Kayla Waugaman, a producer and observatory coordinator of the Buhl Planetarium at the Kamin Science Center, said it's not common for meteors to happen in daylight. A spokesperson for the American Meteor Society added that they're fairly common over the entire planet, but it's rare for someone to see.

"Normally, it would happen over an ocean where nobody gets to hear it, but now thousands and thousands of people got to experience this, this morning," Waugaman said.

Leichliter said it's something she'll never forget.   

"It was definitely attention grabbing, for sure," she said.