Rare daylight fireball over the English Channel, sonic boom reported
A rare daylight fireball was observed over the English Channel at 14:50 UTC on March 20, 2021. The event was followed by a sonic boom, heard by many people from the UK.
The American Meteor Society (AMS) received 131 reports so far. The event was mainly seen from the West of France (Brittany, Normandy, and Parisian region) and from South West England and Wales.
A house-shaking sonic boom was heard in parts of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, and Somerset. The sound reportedly triggered car alarms and shook windows.
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's a meteor!
Ian Dryhurst's dash-cam captured the moment a space rock began burning up in the atmosphere over Jersey this afternoon.
Read more here: https://t.co/xl0URJ0cFx pic.twitter.com/2IdHZJeFy0
— ITV News Channel TV (@ITVChannelTV) March 20, 2021
Here are her pics (shared with permission). She's Jersey not Guernsey and pics taken by her 9 year old! pic.twitter.com/oXxTXj6Vsb
— Jen Deacon (@JenDeaco) March 21, 2021
OK. Here it is!
This afternoon's UK #meteor #bolide over the skies of the Bristol Channel (it's the little bright spot that appears just off the coast near Minehead).
This data was kindly processed for me by @simon_sat (thanks, Simon!)
Image credit: Simon Proud/NCEO/EUMETSAT pic.twitter.com/SrFMPeBQmh
— Will Gater (@willgater) March 20, 2021
Image credit: AMS
Featured image credit: AMS
If you value what we do here, open your ad-free account and support our journalism.
Related articles
Producing content you read on this website takes a lot of time, effort, and hard work. If you value what we do here, select the level of your support and register your account.
Your support makes this project fully self-sustainable and keeps us independent and focused on the content we love to create and share.
All our supporters can browse the website without ads, allowing much faster speeds and a clean interface. Your comments will be instantly approved and you’ll have a direct line of communication with us from within your account dashboard. You can suggest new features and apps and you’ll be able to use them before they go live.
You can choose the level of your support.
Stay kind, vigilant and ready!
You can also support us by sending us a one-off payment using PayPal:
