News - Blogs - A fireball flies across southern California to Arizonas skies

A fireball flies across southern California to Arizona's skies
Published: 9/17/2011 7:00 AM
Last Modified: 9/16/2011 4:52 PM

A fireball captured in a Youtube video on Wednesday night.

Someday, I am going to have a video camera ready with spare batteries when something like this happens.

Until then, please enjoy this short Youtube clip of something I wish all of us could have witnessed ourselves:

Before you all say that this must be a hoax, NASA officials have confirmed what many witnesses have seen: It's a fireball from a piece of asteroid that entered Earth's atmosphere... likely.

According to the Associated Press, witnesses from southern California to Arizona the light hurtle quickly from west to east at around 9:45 p.m. Oklahoma time Wednesday. Many apparently described the light as bluish-green or yellow and orange.

Don Yeomans, who heads NASA's Near-Earth Object Program, said he was convinced it was a fireball — a fragment of an asteroid the size of a baseball or basketball that hit the atmosphere and disintegrated before reaching the ground.

This natural phenomenon tends to happen on a weekly basis, but usually occurs over the ocean where no one can see.

"It's unusual for an object of this size to be seen over populated areas," Yeomans said.

So what caused the color? Yeomans told the AP that the bluish-green color suggests the object had some magnesium or nickel in it. Orange is usually an indication it's entering the atmosphere at several miles per second, a moderate rate of speed.

"It's one of Mother Nature's better light shows," Yeomans said. Understatement of the year!

However, this is likely not a UFO. Yeomans ruled out a dead spacecraft falling back to Earth because such events can be predicted ahead of time. Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor confirmed that there were no aircraft incidents reported in the western region.

Does it really surprise anyone that during these severe, extreme and exceptional drought conditions that the sky would be raining fire instead of water? Well, if we can't have fireballs from Oklahoma's skies, at least we got a measurable amount of rain Friday.

--Althea Peterson

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Almanac

Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun
Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec

	Temperature		Precipitation
Date	High Temp	Low Temp	Total	Month to date	Historical average
1	44°	16°	0	0.00	0.05
2	59°	24°	0	0.00	0.11
3	57°	33°	0	0.00	0.16
4	68°	37°	Trace	0.00	0.21
5	69°	29°	0	0.00	0.26
6	66°	33°	0	0.00	0.32
7	59°	38°	0.05	0.05	0.38
8	51°	34°	0	0.05	0.44
9	44°	36°	0.01	0.06	0.51
10	62°	37°	0.07	0.13	0.57
11	54°	28°	0	0.13	0.64
12	44°	30°	0.25	0.38	0.70
13	55°	40°	0.01	0.39	0.76
14	°	°			0.83
15	°	°			0.89
16	°	°			0.95
17	°	°			1.02
18	°	°			1.09
19	°	°			1.16
20	°	°			1.23
21	°	°			1.31
22	°	°			1.38
23	°	°			1.46
24	°	°			1.53
25	°	°			1.61
26	°	°			1.69
27	°	°			1.77
28	°	°			1.85

TEMPERATURE

RAINFALL

SNOWFALL

Weather World

Follow Jerry Wofford on Twitter for updates during severe weather conditions.

Tulsa weather milestones of 2013 (as of Feb. 12)

Highest temperature: 70 on Jan. 11 (Record: 115 on Aug. 15, 1936)
Lowest temperature: 15 on Jan. 16 (Record: Minus-16 on Jan. 22, 1930)
Hottest month (average): 40.5 degrees in January (Record: 91.7 degrees on July 1980)
Coldest month (average): 40. 5 degrees in January (Record: 21.7 in January 1918)
Most snowfall (day): 0.1 of an inch on Feb. 12(Record: 13.2 inches on Feb. 1, 2011)
Most snowfall (month): 0.1 of an inch in February(Record: 22.5 inches in February 2011)
Most rainfall (day): 0.91 of an inch on Jan. 29 (Record: 9.27 inches on May 26-27, 1984)
Most rainfall (month): 1.54 of an inch in January (Record: 18.18 inches on September 1971)
Highest wind speed: 30 mph on Jan. 30
Previous day with any rain: Feb. 12
Previous day with 1 inch or more of rain: Oct. 17, 2012
Previous day with any snow: Feb. 12
Previous day with freezing temperatures: Feb. 12
Read regular updates on Oklahoma's unpredictable weather and learn more about meteorology from the Tulsa office of the National Weather Service.

>> Visit the main weather page
>> Send us your weather photos
>> Meet the forecasters

Contributors
Staff Writer Althea Peterson started writing for the Tulsa World in March 2007 after previous stops at the Norman Transcript in 2006 and the Oklahoma Gazette in 2005. She followed her older brother from rural Wisconsin (with a public school that never seemed to call snow days) to the University of Oklahoma, but did not follow his pursuit to study meteorology. However, she tries to find as many opportunities to report on the weather as possible.

Staff Writer Jerry Wofford came to the Tulsa World in 2010 from The Manhattan Mercury in Manhattan, Kan. Originally from western Arkansas and a graduate of the University of Oklahoma, Jerry has lived in Tornado Alley his entire life and is one of those people who goes outside when the sirens go off.

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