A meteor flew across the sky in the Northeastern United States on Tuesday morning just before 9 AM, shaking buildings with a thunderous boom as it went.

Meteor Spotted Over Ohio

Residents in parts of Pennsylvania and Ohio reported spotting the fiery streak and hearing the loud boom on Tuesday morning. Local law enforcement authorities also stated that they had been overwhelmed with calls about an explosion. According to NASA, the meteor was first seen 50 miles above Lake Erie, near Lorain, just before 9 AM.

Videos were posted on social media showing the fireball moving across the sky, including one video by the National Weather Service. According to a statement from Bill Cooke, the lead of NASA’s Meteoroid Environments Office, the meteor was produced by an asteroid nearly 6 ft in diameter and weighing 7 tons.

After moving southeast at 45,000 miles per hour for approximately 34 miles through the upper atmosphere, the meteor fragmented over Valley City, Ohio, which is southwest of Cleveland, before breaking into meteorites near Medina County. The fragmentation process, which created an energy equivalent of 250 tons of TNT, caused the boom and shaking felt by citizens of Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The American Meteor Society reportedly received 140 reports of meteor sightings from other states, including Illinois, Delaware, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, New York, Michigan, and Ontario, Canada. According to Douglas Kahn, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Cleveland, the channel’s geostationary lightning mapper had tracked a big flash alongside the boom sound.

“This one really does look like it’s a fireball, which means it’s a meteorite — a small asteroid,” said astronomer Carl Hergenrother, the American Meteor Society’s executive director.

“So much stuff is being launched that a lot of times what you see burning up is just reentering satellites. But usually those don’t get especially bright,” he said.