American Meteor Society
Caught on Weather Radar
The US National Weather Service twitted that its radar may have detected a huge meteor (a fireball) near Viñales, Cuba around 1:21 pm last Friday (February 1st 2019).
@NWSKeyWest radar may have detected the meteor that affected western Cuba earlier today. At 121 pm, a signature was detected near Viñales, Cuba, at a height of over 26,000 ft above ground level. #flwx #KeyWest #FloridaKeys #meteor pic.twitter.com/R2JIlVwpsS
— NWS Key West (@NWSKeyWest) 1 février 2019
Residents in Viñales, Cuba, heard a “large explosion” around this time on Friday afternoon. The explosion has now been confirmed to be from a fireball that produced a meteorite fall. The explosion can be heard in the following video shared by Viñales area resident Juan Alberto Pérez Pozo:
Only 13 witness report so far
The AMS has received only 13 reports from Florida so far about this event.
If you witnessed this event and/or if you have a video or a photo of this event, please
Submit an Official Fireball Report
If you want to learn more about Fireballs: read our Fireball FAQ.
The map below shows the first estimated ground trajectory of the fireball obtained from these witness reports as well as an image obtained from the GOES-16 NOAA Satellite used for the detection of meteoroid impacts by Peter Jenniskens’ team (SETI Institute).
While the trajectory computed based on witness report only indicates that the fireball was traveling from North East to South West, some analysis suggest the fireball was actually travelling the opposite way . Our trajectory is an estimate base on few reports on just one side of the trajectory – note that the end point of the AMS trajectory is less than 11km away from the meteorite location as noted by Marc Douglas Fries from NASA (ARES).
Several people noticed the wrong direction of our initial trajectory, among them Twitter users Scott Sutherland, Clemens Rumpf and Daniel Fischer.
Caught the Florida/Cuba meteor bolide on webcam from EarthCam at Ft. Myer, FL.
They recorded it at just before 1:17 pm ET. #fireball #bolide #meteor #Florida #Viñales #Cuba pic.twitter.com/CSGdZQFnxH— Scott Sutherland (️️️) (@ScottWx_TWN) 2 février 2019
Why our trajectory is wrong? It’s a good question. Unfortunately, many factors can affect the trajectory we compute based on visual witnesses only (weather, distribution of the witnesses, etc.) We only received 13 reports so far about this event. 12 of them are from witnesses who were in Florida at the time of the event: it could be an explanation.
Meteorite Found
Several pieces of the meteorite resulting of the huge fireball has already been found. Twitter user, Fátima Rivera Amador shared the following photos of her finds:
February Meteorites?
This paragraph has been written by AMS’s Operation Manager, Mike Hankey.
Late January and February are known to have an increased rates of meteorite dropping fireballs. Is this a missed perception or reality? If we look back over the last 10 years of meteorite falls, there have been a total of 77 falls from the end of 2009 to the end of 2018. An even distribution of these events over each month would result in .6 meteorites per month/year or 6 meteorites for each month over the last 10 years.
Between January 2009 and January 2018, 9 known meteorites have fallen in the month of February. If we extend to a 6 week period of Jan 15 to Feb 27, the total is 14 meteorites which is 1.5x higher than the even per month distribution.
| Date | Fall Location |
|---|---|
| Feb 1, 2019 | Viñales, Cuba |
| Jan 16, 2018 | Hamburg, MI, USA |
| Feb 16, 2017 | San Pedro de Urabá, Columbia |
| Jan 24, 2016 | Osceola, FL, USA |
| Feb 18, 2016 | Mount Blanco, TX, USA |
| Feb 6, 2016 | Ejby, Denmark |
| Feb 27, 2014 | Kuresoi, Kenya |
| Feb 15, 2013 | Chelyabinsk, Russia |
| Feb 11, 2012 | Xining, China |
| Feb 4, 2011 | Križevci, Croatia |
| Feb 28, 2010 | Kosice, Slovakia |
| Jan 18, 2010 | Lorton, VA, USA |
| Feb 15, 2009 | Ash Creek, TX, USA |
| Jan 17, 2009 | Maribo, Denmark |
The even distribution of meteorites per week/per year would be .14 meteorite per week of the year or 1.4 meteorites per week over 10 years or 8.4 meteorites in 10 years. Over the last 10 years, the 6 week period of late Jan into February has produced 14 meteorites, which is 1.75x higher than an even distribution.
Maybe there is something to these February meteorites after all.
Hello,
I observed this meteor while I was on the cruise ship Celebrity Equinox. I took a photo of the smoke/gas trail at 1319 in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Cuba. I took the photo approximately one minute after seeing the meteor/ fragment. My photo appears to have recorded my location from my iPhone.
Hello Michael!
Have you shared your photo? Have you a link?
Does this include meteorites, found and/or fireballs spotted?? I am curious how many are found and reported per year?
I saw a large fireball that night from my very large living room windows. It was in the southwest sky – but I am located in Virginia Beach VA! I was facing southwest, and it zoomed from high right to low left. Blazing, definitely NOT a powered craft, not oncoming airplane lights
So Feb 1st is my birthday- This was Feb 1st, 2019. I was born at 1:36pm The Meteor was at 1:17pm-1:21pm -around this same time also.. My birth name initials are NT… the meteor flew in over central FL- I saw it from Auburndale FL – I was born in Winter Haven FL – My favorite color is Green and The Meteor was Green, My father that passed was from Jamaica and as an adult he went and worked on some schools in Cuba During their emancipation. He spoke fluent Spanish- my two sisters are mixed with Cuban and Jamaican… What is your take on this.. Anyone have any idea why all this goes together like this…