FRUITLAND, Utah, Dec. 9, 2021 (Gephardt Daily) — Video of what appears to be a meteor streaking across the Utah sky has surfaced in a somewhat peculiar place — and while no one will mistake the image for something captured by the Hubble Space Telescope it does offer proof that those who saw the brilliant ball of light, followed by a flash and shockwave, were not necessarily hallucinating.
The close-encounter-of-a-meteor-kind took place Monday about 6:30 p.m., and within a matter of minutes, friends and family were offering eyewitness accounts on social media.
“BIG METEOR just went over Fruitland airspace and exploded about 20 minutes ago,” wrote Andrew R. “Seriously, about one minute later a BOOOOooooomm… the sound lasted about a minute long itself. Did anyone catch it on camera?”
Fruitland resident Sharon Cook didn’t see or hear the hoopla as it happened, but she did see a post about the cosmic commotion pop up on social media.
“I was just sitting here watching TV and saw a message on my Fruitland Yard Sale Facebook page,” Sharon told Gephardt Daily. Thinking she might have captured the event on one of her home surveillance cameras she searched the recordings but came up empty.
“I spent probably a couple good hours trying to find something, so I gave up. I went to sleep, woke up the next morning, and it suddenly it clicked! I had forgotten to reset the timers on the security cameras during the last time change.
“So when I finally figured it out I went back like 30 minutes and found it. It was just wild,” Sharon said.
Wild, indeed. Not only did she crack the code on the timers, she also caught the scant vision of a streak of light reflecting off the windshield of her pickup truck parked in front of her home.
“I just barely saw it out of the corner of my eye. I said, ‘Let me check that out,’ and so I enlarged it and let it rip,” Sharon said. “It was crazy.”
In the days since the sighting, there have been numerous reports of the fiery streak in the sky from across the western U.S., including those posted on the American Meteor Society’s “Report a Fireball” forum.
Social media users in Fruitland, Duchesne, Cedarview, Tabiona and Altamont who described witnessing the event were clearly impressed by the experience.
“Huge shock wave at my house in Duchesne,” wrote Tad T., in a message to Gephardt Daily. “Others heard and felt it too. Any ideas? Been some comments about an exploding meteor over Fruitland,” he wrote.
“I was outside taking my garbage out. It sounded like thunder, sonic boom,” wrote another social media user. “Directly above us.”
Workers at The BIG G on 40 Gas Station, Café and Grocery, in Fruitland, spoke to Gephardt Daily shortly after the event and were still coming to grips with what they encountered.
“Oh, yeah, we saw it alright,” said the woman who answered the phone. “It was big, big and bright. It was a big bright light, and it kind of looked like a thunderstorm — only bigger!”
Not only did the light fill the sky, the ground shook and rumbled like an earthquake, she said. “It lasted for like 50 seconds.”
According to the AMS website, early December offers prime viewing opportunities for meteor watchers. The impressive annual Geminids meteor showers are expected to peak Dec. 14.
