Stoke-on-Trent, England – Monday, May 06, 2024, 3:00 AM, A meteor fireball was observed heading southwest at 13 km/s, and ending at a height of 22 km above the ground. Although it appeared rather small, I am classifiying it as Class B because of the slow speed of the meteor, steep trajectory, and low wind at the time of the fall, all of which make the search area very small and recovery is likely.
A high confidence trajectory was published by the UK Meteor Data Archive that trajectory solution was run through our 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.
UPDATE 2024/05/18 13:54 UTC V1.1 – High confidence data, and a very precise solution from StrewnLAB. It is possible the search area is a little too precise and some effects are not considered by the simulation. As always, I recommend to search the most likely areas first, then proceed outwards.
Stoke-on-Trent StrewnLAB V1.1Stoke-on-Trent StrewnLAB V1.1 Critical 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 onthe drift of meteorites.
There was almost no wind affecting this event, minimal drift
The author and founder of Strewnify.com, an automotive controls engineer, with a passion for physics.
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