Adair, Michigan, USA
1 min read
Adair, Michigan, USA – February 26, 2021, 10:07 PM local time, hundreds of people across Southern Ontario and Michigan witnessed a meteor fireball, heading northwest from Lake Erie and into the “Thumb” of Michigan.
This was a relatively small event, but it is possible that some fragments reached the ground and the event may have even been detected by Doppler radar. Refer to the sections below for details and maps, which you can download to Google Earth.
| Entry Date/Time: | 2021-02-27 03:07:04 UTC |
| End Location: | Adair, Michigan, USA |
| Endpoint Coordinates: | 42.716°N, -82.645°W |
| Reference Altitude: | 31.7 km above sea level |
| Energy / Mass Estimate: | <0.02kt / <50kg |
| Reference Speed: | 29.4 km/s |
| Bearing: | 311° NW |
| Slope: | 54° from vertical |
| TKW: | none |
| Classification: | unknown |
| Event Links: | NASA Event 20210227-030704 AMS Event 1160-2021 |
Video and News
Several videos of the event were captured from various locations across Southern Ontario. NASA cameras also captured this event on a network of calibrated cameras, which were used to calculate the trajectory (NASA videos not shown here).
Search Efforts
This was a small event, but Doppler radar detected a few blips over the village of Adair, which could possibly be the signature of falling meteorites!
Our very own Strewnify team visited the area on Saturday, February 27th (less than 24 hours after the meteor) and reported that the search area was quite muddy, wet, flooded, and mostly private property, with no trespassing signs everywhere.
© 2021 Samer Hariri
Interest in the search was revived on March 2nd, after weather data became available and we realized that the Doppler signatures matched perfectly with NASA trajectory and the StrewnLAB prediction. The search continues!
Fragments that survived would likely be small (<50 grams). We would recommend searching large open areas with no debris, like parking lots and commercial rooftops.
If you would like to search for for meteorites from this or future events in this region, please join the Facebook group:
StrewnLAB Search Area
A trajectory has been estimated from the videos above, and this data has been run through the StrewnLAB software to predict a search area. Please download and review the Google Earth files below for detailed maps of the search area.
Weather Data
The weather data below is sourced from weather balloons, and publicly available via NOAA’s Integrated Global Radiosonde Archive (IGRA). This data is downloaded and post-processed by the StrewnLAB algorithm, to account for changing weather patterns and weather balloon drift. The plots have altitude on the y-axis, in kilometers above sea level. The wind speed below 10km has large effect on the drift of meteorites.
The author and founder of Strewnify.com, an automotive controls engineer, with a passion for physics.
Hancock, Michigan, USA | james.a.goodall@gmail.com | +1 586 709 5888
