Kingsport, Tennessee – Wednesday, August 2, 2023, 2:13am local time, a meteor fireball was observed heading SSW over Appalachia, heading toward southwest Virginia. Visible fragmentation and end deceleration points to meteorites on the ground, although shallow entry angle and high end height may make recovery challenging. There is possible Doppler data for this fall, see link to Marc Fries NASA page below.
Online video footage was used to triangulate the path of the meteor and the 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.
V3 UPDATE 2023-08-03: The entry angle was more shallow than previously thought (68° from vertical) and the end height was high, at ~34km, so the strewn field is a bit uncertain and large as a result. New video is available, so we are still analyzing.
V4 UPDATE 2023-08-03: Downgraded to Class C, due to large search area and the need for public support. The file includes 3 Doppler polygons that may or may not be related to this event.
StrewnLAB V4 Search AreaStrewnLAB V4 Critical Search Area
Refer to Discord for latest developments.
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 onthe 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
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