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(meteorobs) Re: satisfied on El Paso meteor
Atter more thinking about the imprecise information in the account from a
traveler in New Mexico (name unknown to me), I now feel comfortable that the
Oct 9 event was indeed a meteor. There are a town and a reservoir named
"Elephant Butte" much closer to Truth or Consequences in New Mexico than to
Socorro. Presumably there is a geographic feature of the same name nearby
that is missing from my maps. This observer probably wasn't as close to
Socorro as I first thought. I-25 turns SW a few miles south of Socorro,
later turning SSW. If he were in this stretch of highway and saw the meteor
go toward his front and left, then the "bigturn" is accomplished by the
highway and the meteor path is then oriented toward El Paso. The AP
bigturn.jpg photo from Rick must have an erroneous caption which had assumed
this was the El Paso meteor. Rick agrees the AP probably botched it. The
observer below must have heard something else fly by very near him to have
heard sounds right after seeing the meteor, which was too far away to have
produced any sounds for him.
>>In comparing the report with my itinerary notes that day. I witnessed
>>the event. on Thursday October 9 in the afternoon around 12:45 or 1:00
>>pm as I was driving with a friend toward Las Cruces, NM. We were just
>>south of Socorro on IH-25 (Elephant Butte was directly to the left of
>>us) when I happened to lean over and see the green fireball. It was
>>not directly overhead but I did see it out of the top left side of the
>>windsheild and it streaked down and to the left. As it got closer to
>>the ground it broke apart in several glowing pieces before fading. It
>>left a smoke trail that lasted well over 2 hours.
....
>>The sound effect happened several seconds after the fireball,
>>like maybe 5 or 6 seconds. I remember saying to my traveling partner,
>>"hey, look a meteor, a shooting star!" , immediately after seeing it,
>>then in the silence before her reply, I heard the sound effect. It was a
>>very low toned fog horn type sound that seemed to linger for an instant
>>then fade just like the meteor. That sound really gave me the chills,
So, we are satisfied. But as long as we had conflicting information about
it, and considering the general location of it, we had to get this resolved
first. Rick and I do not accept at face value pronouncements from any
authorities these days, knowing the massive corruption that now exists at
all levels.
Norman