VIDEO: Rare Fireball Meteor Lights Up San Diego Skies
By Rebekah Gonzalez
October 18, 2021
San Diego residents were treated to a rare sighting on Saturday evening (October 16).
A fireball streaked through the night sky in San Diego just after 8:45 P.M. on Saturday.
According to FOX5, residents all over Southern California and even some as far east as Las Vegas saw the streak of light.
Robert Lunsford with the American Meteor Society (AMS) said fireballs are meteors that are larger and brighter than normal. According to NASA, while fireballs occur every day all over the Earth, it’s actually very rare for us to witness them in action.
But over the weekend, clear skies, warm temperatures, dense population areas, and timing all contributed to why the streak was so widely seen across broad regions.
As of 10:30 A.M. the following day, the AMS had 87 people formally report the streak and hundreds more took to social media to say they witnessed the fireball.
According to Lunsford, October and November will bring a fair share of meteor showers.
"Fireball producing meteor showers such as the Taurids are active," he told FOX5 in an email.
“Looking at the computer generated trajectory… it is possible that this fireball was a member of the Taurid shower,” Lunsford continued. “If that is the case then there is a near zero percent chance that this object reached the ground as the comet based material that composes Taurid meteors are just too fragile to survive their plunge through the atmosphere.”
To see where residents reported seeing the fireball, check out this map.