El Dorado, Arkansas, USA
1 min read
El Dorado, Arkansas, USA – February 24, 2020, 8:17 PM local time, hundreds of people across Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas, and Missouri witnessed a meteor fireball, heading south across Arkansas, toward Louisiana. Video from Dallas and Little Rock allowed our team to locate the endpoint at 35 kilometers east of the town of El Dorado, Arkansas, and it burned out at more than 50km above the ground.
Unfortunately, due to the high speed and high end altitude, it is unlikely any sizeable fragements reached he ground. If you would like to hunt for meteorites from this event, we have calculated an area where small fragments could have landed, more than 75 kilometers south of the burnout, in Monroe, Louisiana.
| Entry Date/Time: | 2021-02-25 02:17:13 UTC |
| End Location: | El Dorado, Arkansas, USA |
| Reference Coordinates: | 33.2647°N, -92.2841°W |
| Reference Altitude: | 50 km above sea level |
| Energy / Mass Estimate: | <0.02kt / <50kg |
| Reference Speed: | 26.3 km/s |
| Bearing: | 180° S |
| Slope: | 75° from vertical |
| TKW: | none |
| Classification: | unknown |
| Event Links: | NASA Event 20210225-021713 AMS Event 1094-2021 |
Video and News
There were two known videos captured of the event over Arkansas, a dashcam video from Dallas, and a home security camera video from Little Rock.
Search Efforts
This was a small event and no known fragments have been located. Initially, some meteorite hunters travelled to the region, but it was decided early on to call off the search.
Fragments that survived would likely be small (<10 grams). We would recommend searching large open areas with no debris, like 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
