[meteorite-list] Fw from Rob Matson: 2/9/2002 New England fireball

From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 2009 19:05:28 -0500
Message-ID: <F1B2434631BD4AA68659323F3787DDE8_at_ATARIENGINE2>

Rob Matson asked me to post this for him,
as he's where he can't post it himself.

Sterling Webb
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi All,

I've been revisiting old fireballs for which
meteorites were never recovered, but that
had lots of witnesses, and based on those
reports were likely to have produced meteorites.
One very promising fall occurred in New
England on Saturday afternoon, February 9,
2002. It was observed and or heard by
dozens (if not hundreds) of people, but was
never found. This is not all that surprising
since there were no images or video recorded
of it. But there were sonic booms heard/felt
in Montgomery, Pittsfield, Northhampton,
Turners Falls, Amhurst and Wilbraham (all
in Massachusetts), and there were enough
witness observations that I was able to
bound the fall area.

What I *didn't* have back in 2002 was access
to Doppler radar data. Now, of course, I do,
and since the data is archived back into the
1990s, I went ahead and pulled the records
for the three nearest radars and searched
for transient anomalies. Good news: after
about an hour, I found it! And it's now clear
how meteorites from this fall could have avoided
accidental discovery in the intervening 7 1/2
years. The fall wasn't in a very populated area,
and it wasn't close to where you would think
to look if you were guided by the witness
observations alone.

If there is anyone in the New England area
that would like to try to track this down, just
float me an e-mail and I'll give you the particulars.
There are decent roads into the area, but the
terrain is forested and a little mountainous
(1000-2000'). Without the radar data, this
would be a hopeless area to search; but with it,
the search area is sufficiently small that a
concerted group effort has a chance of success.

--Rob
Received on Wed 02 Sep 2009 08:05:28 PM PDT