Experts say the mysterious boom that rocked New England was a 3-foot meteorite

NASA said the meteorite split 40 miles in the sky, and the energy of the breakup is estimated to be “equivalent to about 300 tons of TNT.”

BOSTON — Reports of a powerful explosion from people across New England have police agencies and others scrambling to understand the cause of the double boom that rocked buildings in Massachusetts and Rhode Island on Saturday.

The American Meteor Society said Saturday that the explosion was actually a meteorite about 3 feet wide that entered the atmosphere around New Hampshire’s border with Massachusetts north of Boston.

Robert Lunsford, the community’s Fireball program monitor, said the group has received dozens of reports from Delaware to Montreal where people heard a double bang, felt the ground shaking or saw a fireball — which he said looked like a shooting star in the daytime sky.

“It was definitely larger than a regular fireball, about a yard wide,” he said.

But Lunsford said it was unlikely the meteorite would hit Earth.

“We will need more information about the trajectory, speed and other aspects to know for sure whether it hit the ground, but if it had not burned up, it would have fallen into the ocean,” he said. “Most of it burns up before it reaches the ground.”

NASA said the meteorite split 40 miles up in the sky, and the energy of the breakup is estimated to be “equivalent to about 300 tons of TNT, which explains the loud noise.”

People in a few states posted on social media that they felt buildings were shaking. Several videos posted on X also captured what appeared to be two quick explosions, without fire, smoke, or other visual causes.

An explosion was heard at around 2pm ET, and it reportedly shook homes and was not felt at all by residents.

“On our lightning maps, on satellite data, you can see exactly where it entered the atmosphere near Boston, causing all this excitement,” WBZ-TV chief meteorologist Eric Fisher said in a video.

The map shows a quick flash and misses it, a flash of “lightning” that Fisher said was the meteor explosion.

Nick Stewart, a spaceflight meteorologist, agreed with the assessment because the large flash seen on the weather tracking software “is not associated with an active thunderstorm.”

“The flash intensity product shows this anomalous ‘flashing’ that is so characteristic of a meteor/meteorite return east of Boston,” he wrote. “This is the likely source of the loud bang/explosion.”

The Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security said they were investigating reports of “audible booms and tremors in eastern Massachusetts,” but there were no known emergency calls related to the explosion and “they do not believe there is any threat to public safety.”

The explosion was reportedly heard dozens of miles away around the Boston area, with residents taking to social media to document their experience with it.

“We heard and felt it in Needham. We thought a tree fell on our house,” one person commented on Fisher’s video. Needham, Massachusetts is about 16 miles from Boston.

“The whole house shook, actually all the houses in the neighborhood,” the Melrose, Massachusetts, resident told WCVB. “It was much louder than a transformer exploding, and it was definitely not an earthquake.”

Agency spokesman Steve Sobey confirmed Saturday that several people had also filed reports with the USGS and registered the tremors they felt with the National Earthquake Information Center.

The agency opened a page for the event, based on the number “Did you feel it?” Reports received on its website. But he said there was no event recorded on the agency’s seismometers. This means that the shaking was not due to an earthquake.

Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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