(meteorobs) old fireball

lgspe99 lgspe at bellsouth.net
Fri Feb 15 13:23:04 EST 2013


I was living in New Iberia at that time, was living in a trailer on Hortense St. I was working for Texaco, Inc as a roughneck at that time, my next door neighbor was an Engineer for Texaco. He and I were talking in the front yard when this bright light came over very fast, then in a matter of seconds it seemed like there was a very loud explosion. It was heading south when we saw it. Jerry jumped in his car and went to the Texaco office in New Iberia and started contacting the different Texaco Camps along the coast by radio. When he came back, he said, yes they all saw it said it looked like it hit the Gulf of Mexico some place south of the Louisiana shore line. I had not thought about that until I read where this Meteor had hit in Russia and has been on the news.  Larry G. Smith P.E.

--- In meteorobs at yahoogroups.com, "Dave Hostetter" <dehostetter at ...> wrote:
>
> I had an interesting conversation about a meteor with a visitor to my
> planetarium yesterday.  As background, there was a tremendous meteor visible
> in the southeastern USA on the evening of March 15, 1957.  I've seen many
> reports from Alabama to Louisiana along with some from surrounding states
> (the local newspaper articles make interesting reading and are probably in
> local libraries along the path).  It was so bright that we regularly get
> questions about it even now, from people who saw it or who remember hearing
> their parents talk about it.  In fact, we get so many questions that when we
> revamped our meteorite and tektite exhibit recently, we included a panel
> about it.  It draws a lot of comment from people who saw the fireball.
> 
> The man I talked with thought he had meteorites from the event.  He had been
> a teenager in a school science club at the time, and a local farmer had
> called the science club the next day to report seeing rocks falling all
> around him...did the club want them?  The club members went out and
> collected dozens of them, and my friend still had his after more than 50
> years!  Unfortunately they turned out to be slag, but his description of the
> meteor was good.  
> 
> This guy is an accomplished local amateur astronomer and life-long science
> lover, and I think he could give me an accurate report.
> 
> He described the fireball as much brighter than the moon, lighting the
> ground almost like daylight only bluer.  He and his parents watched the
> event from their car, stopped at a stop sign in town.  He estimated the
> apparent size of the head of the meteor as slightly greater than the width
> of a thumb at arm's length, and watched as the shape changed from nearly
> round to something like a stretched teardrop.  He saw bright "chunks" coming
> off like sparks.  He described both a sizzling sound and a shock wave boom.
> The boom came a couple seconds after the meteor but the sizzling sound was
> simultaneous with it, so seems to have been electrophonic.  I questioned him
> carefully about that, and he was quite sure of it although he had never
> heard of the possibility of electrophonic sounds. 
> 
> After the meteor, his family drove home, which was essentially around a
> short block.  They got out of the car, and as they went up the steps to
> their porch they felt the ground shake.  He was quite specific that this was
> a seismic event rather than an airborne shock wave because they had already
> heard that and because this shaking was silent.  That's the part that I
> found really interesting, and a detail I had not previously heard.  I drove
> from the intersection where they saw the meteor around the block to his old
> house, and it took about a minute.  Throw in some time to get over their
> surprise after seeing the meteor and time to get out of the car and cross
> their yard, and I figure that seismic event was about 1 to 3 minutes after
> the fireball.  There was a seismic event recorded about 50 miles south that
> may or may not have been related to the fireball (which, based on other
> reports, had to go out over the Gulf of Mexico), but I've got no other
> reports of anyone feeling anything in the distance between.  I have to
> wonder if the ground shake might have been something else.  One to three
> minutes seems like a LONG time under the circumstances.
> 
> Anyway, it was an interesting conversation about a long ago event, but I
> thought some of you might like to hear about it.
> 
> Dave Hostetter
> New Iberia, LA
> 
> 
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