There are weird things falling from the sky and no, my name is not Chicken Little. Last Monday, the people of Austin, Texas saw a fireball streaking through the sky. Most people might think it was a meteor, but the fireball was seen during the day. While that is not completely unheard of, it does seem to be fairly rare.
And, it wasn’t mass hysteria – it was caught on video! The videographer, Eddie Garcia, said he didn’t know what it was, but it was “burning and falling really fast.” At first, officials thought it might be debris from when a Russian and American satellite collided in space on February 10th. But, the U.S. Strategic Command said that couldn’t be it.
Authorities also got reports of sonic booms in the area last Sunday. Again, this led officials to think it was a meteor as one seen during the day in Australia last October and a sonic boom was heard with that one. That meteor proved to be 6 ½ feet wide.
But Austin wasn’t the only town making reports of strange events. In Jackson, Kentucky, several people reported hearing explosions or feeling possible earthquakes last Friday. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) seems to think this may be debris from the satellites and have warned local law enforcement of these events.
The FAA had even warned pilots to be on the lookout for “falling space debris,” but then rescinded the warning. Thankfully, so far, there have been no reports of debris hitting any aircraft.
Meanwhile, something fell on the Al Smith Moving company in Jersey City on Wednesday. A hunk of metal made a two foot square hole in the roof. The piece of metal, which had two holes in it, was so hot that employees couldn’t touch it for 30 minutes. The FAA (those guys are busy this week!) determined it wasn’t part of a plane.
Officials finally determined the piece of metal came from a source a little closer to home than space. It was a tooth from a giant mulching machine from Reliable Wood Products, located about 300 yards away from Al Smith Moving.