Event: 20260429-071216


Well over a hundred eyewitnesses in the states of Oregon and Washington and the Canadian province of British Columbia have filed reports on the American Meteor Society website of a bright fireball seen at 12:12 am Pacific Daylight Time on Wednesday, April 29 (2026 April 29, 07:12 UTC). The information in these accounts has been combined with data from publicly accessible cameras in the region and from the Geostationary Lightning Mapper on the GOES-18 satellite to derive a trajectory for the meteor. Based on this analysis, the fireball first became visible at an altitude of 56 miles above Oktwanch Peak on Vancouver Island, moving to the southwest at 66,000 miles per hour. The object, likely a fragment from a comet about 2 feet in diameter with a weight of 1000 pounds, managed to travel 55 miles through the upper atmosphere before fragmenting 39 miles above the Pacific Ocean, about 20 miles west of the town of Yuquot.

We thank the American Meteor Society for providing the eyewitness reports.


Event Data

Event ID 20260429-071216
Date (UTC) April 29, 2026
Time (UTC) 07:12:16
AMS Event 3168-2026
Size 2 feet in diameter, about 1000 pounds
Origin cometary
Chicken Little Start Lat/Lon +49.948, -126.186
Chicken Little End Lat/Lon +49.493, -127.112
Chicken Little Altitude 90.6 km → 62.0 km ( 56.3 miles→ 38.6 miles)
Chicken Little Speed 29.5 km/s (65,900 mph)