Event: 20230417-170419

A small number of eyewitnesses in Oklahoma, Texas and Arkansas reported seeing a rare daylight fireball over the state of Oklahoma on April 17, 2023 at 12:04 PM Central Daylight Time (17:04 UTC). An analysis of their accounts places the first visibility of the meteor 55 miles above the community of Ashland, moving slightly west of south at 61,000 miles per hour. The reports put the end of the fireball’s trajectory 37 miles above the town of Coalgate, with some eyewitnesses describing a bright terminal flare, indicating that the object disintegrated at that location.

The event was also detected by the Geostationary Lightning Mappers (GLM) on the GOES-16 and GOES-18 satellites. Data from these instruments place the terminal flare at an altitude of 34 miles above the town of Atoka, about 12 miles to the southeast of the eyewitness location. The GLM position is supported by a video of the meteor from an EarthCam on top of Reunion Tower in Dallas, which gives an end point azimuth passing right over Atoka. The discrepancy between the eyewitness and satellite data is due to the small number of eyewitnesses (only 8), which makes the trajectory more uncertain and subject to error.

The GLM data and information from infrasound stations in the area indicate that the fireball possessed an energy equivalent of about 3 tons of TNT, meaning that the object that produced it had a weight of approximately 75 pounds and a diameter around 1 foot.

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Event Data