[meteorite-list] McCartney's News from the Canadian Fall

From: McCartney Taylor <mccartney_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2008 23:02:25 -0600
Message-ID: <d7dd65ce3b404d3fa5937aba33404af4_at_ucv1.vhostdns.com>

The hunting is over, 5-10 cm of snow is predicted tonight. More fell last night. Searching is all but impossible at this point. The weather has been abnormally snow free up till this week.

We have had the luck of securing 5% of the strewnfield. We also had the luck of a really great landowner at that. We've had to forfeit a sizable portion of our finds to this land owner, who fully deserves it for his co-operation with us. In fact, he deputized us to police his property and kick off the plethora of trespassers that was rampant after the news aired locally.

The stone looks like an H6, but I'm not qualified to make a call on that. I do know that we're seeing alot of secondary crust, so perhaps this thing blew high? Sonny spotted some veining in some of his stones. I've managed to mainly find fully crusted individuals.

I want everyone to know, my luggage was lost coming into Canada. So I searched in -22 Celsius with the clothes on my back that I wore on the plane. If you think you are a meteorite hunter, you will know when you crawl on your hands and knees looking for pee sized meteorites in -22C. You'll either cut it, or go home. Me...I'm still here.

The fall looks big. But after today, the material coming out is going to stop. Most of the material we saw recovered was stolen. It will be claimed 'roadway'. I even heard of some falling on crown lands 10 km away!

Interviews done indicate 15 'pops' when the fireball blew. It was a hell of a show, I hear. One person recalled his tin roof sounding like it was hit by hail stones.

My best guess on TKW is about 35kg of which 30kg is in the hands of the Mitchell family/Dr Hildebrand. The Mitchell have expressed no interest in selling. The few locals who have offered material for sell are asking so much I can't touch it. Its that bad.

Today we were interviewed by Canadian Broadcasting. Sonny did well in expressing space enthusiasm, while I did a short stint on the science and ballistics of the fall. Then we took the camera guy hunting. To my stunned eyes, we stumbled on a meteorite while walking 20m forward to find a shoot spot. That was caught on film. (68grams) Then within 20m we found a tiny 2nd one. Frilling amazing. They made a wrap because they were freezing and left. What totally killed me, was when I went back to hunting, I noticed the camera guy had STEPPED on another meteorite, about 25g. LOL! Funny funny.

best
-mt
Received on Sat 06 Dec 2008 12:02:25 AM PST