Thursday, April 30, 2009

More reports on fireballs

A few readers responded to my post on last weekend's fireballs in the Flagstaff area. This first one was a comment added to the post, and offers support for the idea that something made it all the way to the ground. I'm not sure how many folks spotted this in the comments section, so I wanted to highlight it:

Could be connected...
My son and I observed a large vertically descending fireball at 1104 pm Saturday night falling in
the Tonto Nat'l Forest area just to the NW of Cave Creek.
It was startling in that we could see the swirling flamelike effect as it came down. From our vantage point in Desert Hills the fireball fell behind Elephant Mt. Immediately at impact a large surface glow or residual explosion illuminated the sky, so it was apparent the fireball indeed did impact and should have left a debris sight on the ground. We could not hear any sound of the impact. Very exciting sight.

We did phone MCSO and they had add'l sighting from a motorist on the Payson Hwy to Fountain Hills.
using my topo map and a straight line, the impact location would have been between Elephant Mt and the Payson area. i have not found anyone else locally that observed this event.
S.M. Desert Hills. 10:24 PM

Tonight, I got an email from David S, describing another fireball, this one on Tuesday:

I saw a huge burning, smoking fireball falling quite slow very large with orange, green, red and blue colors very bright - nothing like I had ever seen. The problem is, mine was Tuesday, April 28, at around 7 PM ish - still some daylight left. From the village of Oak Creek, AZ, I was looking north -slightly east. - David S.

Does anyone else have more info on these events?