SUMMARY

SUMMARY

This event was a long-lasting daytime fireball seen outside of Wichita, KS. The event appears in Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) imagery from both the GOES East and GOES West satellites.

Signatures consistent with falling meteorites appear in radar imagery from the KICT (Wichita, KS), KINX (Tulsa, OK), KTWX (Topeka, KS), and KVNX (Vance AFB, OK) NEXRAD radars operated by NOAA.

Only one video exists of the bolide, found on the American Meteor Society website for this event, but it does not include a time stamp. Accurate timing is necessary to build a strewn field model as it is used to calculate the masses of meteorites observed on radar. Timing was provided by the NASA/SETI team who provide the NASA Bolides website (https://neo-bolide.ndc.nasa.gov/). This website details bolides observed by the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) instruments on the GOES family of NOAA weather satellites. Many thanks to the NASA Bolides professionals for providing their analysis, without which the strewn field would not be possible.

This fall occurred into high winds coming out of ~300 degrees on the compass, with peak wind speeds in excess of 100 mph at ~13 km (42,650') altitude. Meteorites may be widely scattered as a result, and the observed radar sigantures cover a strewn field ~23 km long.

Meteorites are observed in a size range spanning 133 to 1g. Larger meteorites may have fallen but meteorites larger than ~150g rarely appear on radar due to their rapid descent.

The strewn field shown here was calculated using the Jormungandr model. The intentionally simplified depiction shown here shows likely landing sites for meteorites ranging from 1g (yellow) to 10 kg (red). Smaller polygons show the calculated landing sites for meteorites observed in individual NEXRAD radar sweeps. Landing sites for 1kg and 10 kg meteorites are estimated.

The ground track for this event has not been calculated from direct observations as only one video exists. It is an estimate based on AMS and radar data, and from the sole video available. If the true azimuth differs from what is shown here the 1kg and 10kg meteorite landing fields will differ.

Weather at the site is in the 50s-60s F with rain at the time of the fall. The fall site is predominantly farmland.

Congratulations and thanks are due to citizen scientist Mr. Eric Rasmussen who was the first to identify this meteorite fall in radar imagery.