According to NASA, a meteor soared over the Statue of Liberty before crumbling about 30 miles above Midtown Manhattan. The space rock passed through the atmosphere over the Big Apple around 11:15 a.m., the same time New Yorkers reported seeing a flash of fire streak across the sky and felt the ground slightly shaking under their feet. Twenty people across New Jersey, New York and Connecticut reported seeing the fireball stretch across the sky, with one person saying the shooting star was illuminated yellow, green and white.
The speeding spectacle lasted for almost 30 seconds before fragmenting into three pieces, the eyewitnesses wrote to the American Meteor Society. NASA’s Meteor Watch believes that the “daylight fireball” was first spotted about 40 miles above New York Harbor’s Upper Bay, where the Statue of Liberty stands. Moving at a rate of 34,000 miles per hour, “the meteor descended at a steep angle of just 18 degrees from vertical, passing over the Statue of Liberty before disintegrating 29 miles above midtown Manhattan,” NASA wrote in a Facebook post.
No meteorites or debris from outer space that hit the Earth’s surface were produced by the event. Fortunately, there were no reports of damages or injuries related to the event, the city’s Office of Emergency Management confirmed. As for the reported shaking, experts do not believe it had any ties to the meteor or any other natural event. The US Geological Survey National Earthquake Information Center confirmed it received reports of shaking in the northeast New Jersey and Staten Island, New York area but eliminated the possibility that an earthquake struck.
The agency said in a statement, “An examination of the seismic data in the area showed no evidence of an earthquake. The USGS has no direct evidence of the source of the shaking. Past reports of shaking with no associated seismic signal have had atmospheric origins such as sonic booms or weather-related phenomena.” NASA suspects the shaking was tied to reports of military activity in the area. The shooting star sighting comes as the Big Apple withstood scorching temperatures. The mercury reached 100 degrees but felt more like 110.