Patch Grove, Wisconsin, USA
1 min read
Patch Grove, Wisconsin, USA – January 20, 2022, 6:48 AM local time, hundreds of people across Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois, witnessed a meteor fireball, heading southwest through Wisconsin, starting above Reedsburg and ending above the town of Patch Grove.
This was a relatively small event, but it is likely that some fragments reached the ground. Some meteorites may have even been detected by Doppler weather radar. Refer to the sections below for details and maps, which you can download to Google Earth.
| Entry Date/Time: | 2022-01-20 12:48:00 UTC |
| End Location: | Patch Grove, WI |
| Endpoint Coordinates: | 42.998°N, 91.058°W |
| Reference Altitude: | 32.5 km above sea level |
| Energy / Mass Estimate: | < 1 tonne TNT / <50kg |
| Reference Speed: | 16 km/s |
| Bearing: | 230° NE |
| Slope: | 51° from vertical |
| Estimated Strewn Mass: | < 2.1 kg |
| Classification: | unknown |
| Event Links: | NASA ARES Fall Page AMS Event 512-2022 |
Video and News
Several videos of the event were captured and posted online.
Search Efforts
This was a small event, but definitely worth hunting, because of the Doppler data. You have the best chance of finding fragments in the 1 to 10 gram range. Local conditions are very cold, and there is a little snow on the ground, but not enough to stop the hunt.
If you would like to search for for meteorites from this or future events in this region, please join the Discord or Facebook group.
Join the Eastern USA Facebook Group
StrewnLAB Search Area
A trajectory has been estimated from the videos, and this data has been run through the StrewnLAB software to predict a search area, which matches the Doppler data for lighter fragements. Since there are two likely Doppler signatures for this event, we have also used these to predict the critical search area. Please download and review the Google Earth files below for detailed maps of the search area. Coming soon.
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
