NASA confirms daylight fireball over Houston after possible meteorite strikes house
A bright fireball was observed over the Houston, Texas area at 21:40 UTC on March 21, 2026, producing sonic booms as it broke apart in the atmosphere. NASA said the event was detected by Geostationary Lightning Mappers aboard GOES satellites, while local officials reported that a possible meteorite fragment struck a house in north Houston.
Bright daylight fireball over Houston, Texas on March 21, 2026. Credit: AMS/Krystal.C
A possible meteorite reportedly struck a house in Ponderosa Forest, north of Houston, Texas, on Saturday, March 21, damaging the roof and passing through two stories of the structure, according to local officials.
NASA confirmed that a bright fireball crossed the Houston area at around 21:40 UTC on March 21. However, as of March 22, no publicly available laboratory analysis had confirmed that the object recovered from the Ponderosa Forest home was a meteorite.
The disintegration of the asteroidal fragment — estimated to weigh about 1 ton, with a diameter of approximately 0.9 m (3 feet) — released energy equivalent to 26 tons of TNT, according to NASA.
This generated a pressure wave that propagated to the ground, producing sonic booms reported by residents in the area. Doppler weather radar detected debris signatures consistent with meteorites falling between Willowbrook and Northgate Crossing.
Ponderosa Fire Chief Fred Windisch told CBS News that what appeared to be a meteorite crashed through a woman’s house and landed in the kitchen. Windisch said the object was slightly larger than his hand.
Preliminary analysis indicates the meteor was first detected at an altitude of 79 km (49 miles) above Stagecoach, located northwest of Houston.
It moved southeast at approximately 56 000 km/h (35 000 mph), breaking apart at an altitude of 47 km (29 miles) above Bammel, west of Cypress Station.
The event was detected by Geostationary Lightning Mappers aboard GOES satellites and supported by eyewitness reports submitted to the American Meteor Society (AMS).
AMS received 149 reports as of 07:30 CDT (12:30 UTC) on March 22.
The Houston event follows another meteorite-related house-damage report earlier this month. On March 8, a bright fireball crossed the sky over western Europe and produced meteorites that struck residential buildings in Koblenz, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, with fragments penetrating roofs in the city’s Güls district.
Yesterday’s event over Houston also follows another recent daylight fireball in the United States. On March 17, a bright daytime meteor crossed parts of Pennsylvania and Ohio at around 13:01 UTC, producing a loud sonic boom that was widely heard across the region.
References:
1 Fireball event 1959-2026 – AMS – March 21, 2026
I am an Assistant Editor and Severe Weather & Science Journalist at The Watchers, specializing in real-time severe weather coverage, geophysical event reporting, and research-driven scientific analysis. You can reach me at rishav(at)watchers(.)news.
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