MONTREAL – A Canadian expert says a bright flash of light accompanied by sounds of a booming explosion in parts of Eastern Canada were probably a relatively good-sized fireball.
Numerous people posted Twitter messages reporting a blue flash and a thundering boom in the Montreal and Ottawa areas at about 8 p.m. eastern Tuesday.
Quebec provincial police also received several calls.
Peter Brown, a physics professor at Western University in London, Ont., says the fact there was sound usually indicates something penetrated deeper into the atmosphere.
He would not speculate, however, on the size of what’s believed to have been a meteor.
Brown said today he would not be surprised if remnants of the fireball — meteorites — landed on the ground somewhere.
The university has a network of about a dozen video stations that watch the sky all night looking for bright meteors.
Brown, who researches meteors and comets, says there was bad weather and it was cloudy and overcast Tuesday night and that no meteor was spotted in the data that was collected.
One person in St-Lazare, west of Montreal, said she heard what sounded like a huge garbage truck rumble past her house for a few seconds.
A television station in Plattsburgh, N.Y. (WPTZ) near the Quebec border reported receiving numerous phone calls reporting what sounded like an earthquake.
