People across Pennsylvania and Ohio were wondering what they saw streak across the sky and the loud boom that came with it on St. Patrick’s Day morning.
Calls flowed into 911 centers in both states with people reporting an “earthquake-like” explosion.
It wasn’t a quake or an explosion.
The boom that they heard was probably from a meteor, WPXI reported.
One of our employees, Jared Rackley, caught this morning's meteor on camera from the Pittsburgh area. pic.twitter.com/2LdqOpChti
— NWS Pittsburgh (@NWSPittsburgh) March 17, 2026
The National Weather Service from Pittsburgh said, “We’re receiving reports across western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio of a loud boom and a fireball in the sky. Our satellite data suggest it was possibly a meteor entering the atmosphere,” EarthSky reported.
WHIO reported sightings in New York as well.
Cleveland’s office of the NWS said that it was a meteor, confirmed by the data it gathered from the Geostationary Lightning Mapper.
The latest GLM imagery (1301Z) does suggest that the boom was a result of a meteor. pic.twitter.com/CH7oJ4Q1OY
— NWS Cleveland (@NWSCLE) March 17, 2026
The American Meteor Society said there were more than 100 pending meteor reports from not only Ohio and Pennsylvania but as far away as Virginia and Canada.
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