Muskogee, Oklahoma, USA – Friday, January 20, 2023, 3:38 AM local time, A meteor fireball was observed heading south at 13 km/s, and ending at a height of 21 km above Muskogee, Oklahoma.
Meteorites have been recovered from this fall! Refer to the sections below for details and search maps, which you can download to Google Earth.
On Saturday, January 21st, Dr. Marc Fries of NASA released some impressive looking Doppler data, indicating a large fall. Several meteorite hunters travelled to Oklahoma and by Sunday, five meteorites had been recovered, 3 of which were over 250 grams!
Dr. Marc Fries of NASA reviewed the data and noted, “It looks like it was a fairly massive fall.”
Doppler data and Strewn Field Estimation from Dr. Marc Fries at NASA
Download Dr. Marc Fries 3D Doppler data KMZ export here:
Pictured here is Roberto Vargas, with a large mass he recovered, weighing 309.6 grams. The meteorite material is stony, possibly L chondrite. At least 5 other masses have been recovered, ranging from 127 to 330 grams.
Roberto Vargas with his 309.6 gram stone
Impact site
309.6 grams!
Fractured face revealing the chondrite matrix
Main Mass
The main mass was found on the farm of Brad and Jolene Ward, about 8 km southeast of Muskogee, well inside the Strewnify search area. Click below to read the story!
We have solved several iterations of a trajectory solution, based on the videos and still images above. The latest trajectory solution was run through the StrewnLAB software to predict the search area shown below. Please download and review the Google Earth files below for detailed maps of the search area.
Due to high winds at the time of the fall (see Weather data below), the strewn field is a few miles east of the meteor path, and the strewn field is likely more than 2 miles wide. The posted maps comprehend the wind drift, but in the end, it makes the resulting search area larger.
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.
Very high crosswinds from the W will make this strewn field very wide and shifted to the east.
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
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