Posted on 04/24/2005 9:29:44 PM PDT by Selene
BOSTON (AP) - A meteor shower Sunday night sparked a flurry of frantic phone calls to police departments across New England from people who saw bright lights moving in the sky, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration said.
Yes, it's called 'global warming'.
*ping*
Ok, the other thread is running out of jokes...come make some over here!!!! :o)
Isn't that in the drama department???
Oh, Art Bell will be all over this one tonight. I can hear callers now describing this as a cover for an alien invasion. Ahh, the joys of late night talk radio. So many hours of merriment that conflict with needed sleep.
And they call rednecks ignorant!!!
Of course, if it would've happened here in Tejas, the call would have gone something like this:
911 Dispatcher: Hello, 911, what's your emergency?
Bubba: We uh, seen these lights in the sky, me and Ethel. Furst we thought they was swamp gas, then we's remembere we don't live near no swamp, they was real purty and all, but since it ain't the 4th of July, New Years, Christmas or Ethel's burthday, we know they ain't fireworks....
I gets better...
"We're getting various descriptions of lights in the sky," he said. "Everything from green lights to planes going down."
Around 8:30 p.m., the National Weather Service in Taunton started receiving dozens of phone calls from witnesses who saw a "huge fireball moving from west to east," said meteorologist Eleanor Vallier-Talbot.
"We have no clue what it was. That's not our department," she said.
Police and Coast Guard officials in Connecticut said there were reports of everything from meteors and missiles to multicolored objects in the sky from Windham in the eastern part of the state to Branford, along Long Island Sound near New Haven.
Firefighters in Branford responded to several reports of a possible plane crash in Long Island Sound in the Thimble Island area. But a search did not turn up anything and was called off at about 8:50 p.m. after the Coast Guard learned of the meteor shower.
"We got about a half-dozen calls on it, people seeing a large orange ball landing in Long Island Sound," said Branford Deputy Fire Chief Bill Pepe.
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/connecticut/ny-bc-ct--meteorshower0424apr24,0,7518443.story?coll=ny-region-apconnecticut
If it's not "social science", no. They don't. It's not even required to graduate HS in LAUSD any more.
This meteor shower, the Lyrids, wasn't hyped by the local weathermen on TV, so no one knew it was occurring. Plus, the rate of meteors was higher than expected, and at least one fireball (probably the "plane crashing") was observed.
Meteor fireballs can be a very alarming sight if you don't know what they are.
Ping!( dixie-ammo ping:p )
What I don't understand is why the media constantly describes a bolide or fireball as a "meteor shower"
*ping*
another thread you'll want to check out :o)
Don't forget the Valley! The call would have proceeded thusly:
Dios mio, Mi chica an' me seen these funny luces in el cielo an' we were wondering what the h*ll is going on? We are hoping that chisos are not coming to earth...
2 things that scare me about people. World of the Worlds would still send people into hysterics and Jesus would still be crucified.
I doubt this had anything remotely to do with the Lyrids at all.
Basically, there's a "scheduled" "shower" every day of the year; most don't have real high meteor rates. They are the result of the earth passing through comet orbits; what creates the meteors are the equivalent of tiny pieces of styrofoam.
There are very few REALLY REALLY bright fireballs from any of these "showers."
They come from specfic radiants (the Lyrids, in the constellation Lyra.) Just because a fireball occurs during the "scheduled" time of a shower does not mean it is PART of that shower; it's far more likely that a really really bright bolide is an "erratic" (not part of any shower.)
Sunday night wasn't remotely close to the peak of the Lyrids anyway.
2 things that scare me about people. World of the Worlds would still send people into hysterics and Jesus would still be crucified.
And the others that WANT it to happen.
We saw a HUGH meteor flying from east to west this evening just before 8pm. At first I thought it was someone shooting a bottle rocket, it seemed so large and so close. I don't know how far away from us (Central Mass.) it was, but it was big and bright!
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