screenshot from NWS Pittsburgh video of St. Patrick’s Day meteor (video was posted on X)

20 March 2026

On St. Patrick’s Day around 9:00am I was not paying attention to the sky. I wasn’t looking out the window and if I’d heard a faint sonic boom I would have dismissed it as construction noise. Meanwhile, outside many windows, a 7-ton asteroid crossed the sky in just 3 seconds and exploded over Ohio.

The meteor entered the Earth’s atmosphere 50 miles above Lake Erie and sped southward over Ohio. Amazingly, the sky was so clear in Pittsburgh that it was easily seen here. (If I’d only been looking!) The best online footage came from Pittsburgh’s National Weather Service.

On Wednesday morning the Today Show ran a segment about the meteor.

NASA drew a map of the meteor’s path (in Green) and its expected debris field.

Debris field map of St. Patrick’s Day meteor in Ohio (screenshot from NASA)

Meteorite hunters have swarmed to Ohio, looking for a piece of Outer Space.