Gerry Palmers Science 08.19.2022 21:Aug PM EDT

Mysterious Loud Boom Heard in Utah Likely from Exploding Perseid Meteor, Say Experts

Residents of Northern Utah woke up to a startling boom on Saturday, and all indications point to an exploding Perseid meteor as the cause.

The loud boom startled northern Utah at 8:32 am local time, Deseret News reported. This led to a resulting frenzy on social media. Uploaded videos from home cameras captured the loud boom, which was heard throughout Wasatch Front, northern Utah and even areas of southern Idaho.

Boom Not from an Earthquake or Miitary Operation

Several Utah residents noted seeing a fiery mass in the sky, stating that the boom could come from a meteor. The National Weather Service also supported the assumption about a meteor causing the boom as it saw flashes appearing on its maps not resulting from thunderstorms.

The occurrence was not an earthquake, as the University of Utah Seismograph Stations confirmed, nor was it due to a military operation, which normally emit sonic booms, as what Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and the Utah National Guard tweeted.

Video Showed Streaking Meteor As Cause of Loud,Mysterious Boom

Attention then shifted to outer space. A home security camera captured the cause of the commotion. In a Twitter post, a video revealed a blue fireball crossing across the morning sky just before the boom.

In addition to satellite lightning detection picking up on the flash/tail, we've now got video confirmation of the meteor heard across northern Utah, southern Idaho and elsewhere this morning. #utwx #idwx #wywx https://t.co/tG9NZHWWZo
— NWS Salt Lake City (@NWSSaltLakeCity) August 13, 2022

Since then, several reports of the fireball were submitted to the American Meteor Society.

No reports of meteorites, however, were found from the explosion, but space rock fragments might have been scattered across the area, a NASA volunteer said in a KSLTV report. It would be difficult to pinpoint where the exploding meteor originated from, but it likely came from the Perseids, experts said on the Deseret News report.

Perseids Are the Likely Origin of Exploding Meteor

The Perseid meteor shower happens in July and August every year as Earth goes in the direction of debris of comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle. Debris may not be that significant, but they hit Earth's atmosphere at 133,200 mph (214,360 km/h), according to the American Meteor Society noted. This year, the Perseid meteor shower peaked on Aug. 11 and 12.

Meteors also emit sonic booms as they streak across the atmosphere faster than the speed of sound. The sound of a "boom" of a traveling meteor usually is heard several seconds after the streaking meteor is seen. But most of time, the boom is not heard because the meteors are just too high in the atmosphere for the sound to reach anyone's ears on the ground.

Falling space rock has become increasingly common. Earlier in 2022, a fireball streaked across Ontario, Canada, while small meteorites were scattered across Mississippi. On rare occurrences, large meteors that can cause damage pass through the atmosphere. In 2013, a large meteor exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, shattering thousands of windows and generating an eye-popping flash.