Scientists Say Tuesday’s Meteor Likely Disintegrated

Scientists at the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle said Wednesday that a meteor many witnesses saw shooting across the sky on Tuesday morning had likely disintegrated and not struck the Earth.

Witnesses from Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and British Columbia had reported seeing the meteor around 5:30 a.m. Tuesday.  Local officials in central Washington were dispatched after some of the witnesses said the meteor had hit the ground southwest of Ritzville.   

Working with the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, scientists from UW’s Seattle campus said yesterday they believe the meteor had disintegrated at an altitude of 19 miles above the Blue Mountains, approximately 25 miles north of LaGrande, OR.
 
Stephen Malone, professor emeritus of space sciences and former director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, worked with his colleagues at the UW and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland to triangulate the location of the disintegrated meteor.  The team used seismometers, but said the readings were slightly inaccurate since the closest seismometer to the meteor’s disintegration point had been out of commission during the past month.