[meteorite-list] NEW YORK FIREBALL / Acknowledgement & Gratitude

From: Darryl Pitt <darryl_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 10 Mar 2009 18:07:49 -0400
Message-ID: <88D503A2-E5BC-415A-833A-98EC2BD8672E_at_dof3.com>

Folks,

Before I ramp into an update of the Westchester, New York fireball,
special kudos are due list member Marc Fries of the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory along with his meteorologist brother.

As you may recall, Doppler radar revealed the debris cloud created by
the atmospheric break-up of the space shuttle Columbia. The
appearance of Doppler radar returns provided Marc and his brother the
idea to take a look at such data in the search for meteorites. For
years Marc had been waiting to test his hypothesis, and the West,
Texas fall provided exactly what he was looking for: clear sky, a
radar return from two different radars and recovered stones. (It
bears noting that Mike Farmer and Robert Ward both informed me that
when they saw the Doppler image of the West debris cloud---which they
likened to looking like a hail storm---they couldn't get to West,
Texas quickly enough.)

NEW YORK FIREBALL

This past Friday evening Liz Holland witnessed the descent of a
fireball from her Mt. Kisco (northern Westchester County) home---an
hour or so North of New York City. After having spoken with Liz at
length, it was clear she had seen a bolide---and it wasn't arcing
across the sky but appeared to be coming somewhat towards her. Around
the same time, sonic phenomena consistent with the sonic boom of a
meteoroid breaking the sound barrier were heard throughout eastern
Westchester County. Upon news of the same, my wife and I called
numerous police stations near and far and failed to make much
headway. Another piece to the puzzle was needed. Marc produced a
Doppler return taken about the same time as the aforementioned visual
and sonic phenomena which revealed a debris cloud over Long Island
Sound. He is currently working with his brother gathering and
analyzing further data. I've helped put the New York media on alert
and hopefully something, somewhere will turn up. It's currently
unclear what portion of this event has met a watery end.

Fries Brothers, thank you for your assistance.


Darryl
Received on Tue 10 Mar 2009 06:07:49 PM PDT