Large Fireball Meteor with Sonics Over Ohio

reply to post by IAMTAT


It's actually very difficult to judge distance and direction in the case of meteors. Meteors that are over head are usually much closer than meteors seen to be low on the horizon, although it may not seem this way. The diagram on this page will shed some light on why this is.

This is also the reason no sound was heard in your case. Booms only occur when meteoroids penetrate the atmosphere down to below about 50 km where the air is dense enough for sound waves to propagate.

The meteor your wife saw was probably grazing the upper layers of Earth's atmosphere - scroll down at the link I posted above to the section on earth grazers for more info.