Meteorites #1 — My Family Saw One Fall !!

Yes, its true. And I don’t mean “We saw a meteor”, because most anyone could have seen a meteor in the last few days as the tail of the Tempel-Swift Comet came in contact with Earth.

A meteor is something that enters the earth’s upper atmosphere and burns up, leaving a streak of light across the sky. What we saw was one coming all the way down to the ground, a meteor-ite.

We were out on a walk, and enjoying watching the few “Perseid” meteors flitting across the sky, when one shot right overhead, and passed below the treeline to our south—not far off.

We were in shock. It wasn’t massive, but it wasn’t a speck of dust either. It fell so close to us that I was able to see details of the sparks flying off of it as well as hear it. And I know it must have hit … how could it drop below the treeline at that close of range and not hit the ground?

Sure, it may have landed a half-mile to a mile away, but it was close!

My wife saw it first and she cried out just in time for everyone to turn and see it. All except for my son, Leighton, who just happened to be holding a home-made torch, which blinded him somewhat.

We didn’t go looking for it the next day because:

• We don’t own the land it fell on, nor do we know who owns it.
• It would have been almost impossible to find. Imagine searching for a fist sized rock across 50 acres.

Seeing this meteorite was really fascinating to me, because the first chapter of Merlin’s Blade ends with a meteorite crashing down. And not just a little one like we saw, but one that is about 60 feet across. We’re talking serious damage.

More about that in my next post: Meteorites #2 — How To Create Your Own

p.s. The image above is from a meteorite that fell in Canada… click to see a video of it coming down as captured on a police cruiser’s camera!