Meteor `like a fireball' flies across sky

Sun-Sentinel
Oct. 01, 2005

Foooosh!

That's how fast witnesses said a glowing meteor streaked across Florida skies Thursday before disappearing. From Fort Lauderdale to Cape Canaveral people called the National Weather Service reporting the bright orange orb.

"We think it was a meteor that was falling through the sky and burning up," said Barry Baxter, a weather service meteorologist.

"We don't know if it was over the ocean or land. [People] just said it was over the sky, like a fireball ... with a smoke tail behind it."

That's how Bob Cooper, 48, of Dania Beach, described it, a flaming ball without the smoke tail. He was in the back yard throwing a Frisbee to Bill, his golden retriever, when something caught his attention.

"All of a sudden this thing shot from my right," said Cooper, describing the "thing" about the size of a baseball. "And it was super fast, so you know it was in a hurry."

A 911 caller reported a plane crash about 7 p.m. at the old Harris Ranch on Southeast River Lane, Martin County officials said. But air traffic controllers at Miami International Airport told Martin County authorities it was a meteor.

It was unclear what direction the glowing glob traveled or the size. Baxter said NASA would determine both.

"If it was determined by NASA not to be a piece of re-entering space debris, then it was most likely a sporadic fireball," said Jack Horkheimer, planetarium director at the Miami Museum of Science.

"It has all the determiners of a fireball."

Fireballs are extremely bright meteors about the size of a baseball or basketball that slam into the earth's atmosphere at high speeds, he said.

They are common, but often go unreported because most of the planet is uninhabited; water covers 70 percent.

"They are nothing to worry about -- a wonderful phenomenon of nature," Horkheimer said.