Boom In Cleveland Could Have Been Meteor, NWS Says | Weather.com
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A boom was heard across much of northeast Ohio.

Ron Brackett
ByRon Brackett
just nowUpdated: March 17, 2026, 12:03 pm EDTPublished: March 17, 2026, 12:03 pm EDT
MeteorJaredRackley.jpg

Jared Rackley, an employee of the National Weather Service office in Pittsburgh, caught this view of the fireball on Tuesday, March 17, 2026.

(Jared Rackley/NWS/X)

A loud boom heard across Cleveland on Tuesday morning could have been caused by a meteorite, according to the National Weather Service.

"Heard the loudest boom just now in northeast OH. People heard it as far as Avon. What was that? Meteor? @NWSCLE," wrote @jacecraftmiller on X.

The NWS office in Cleveland responded with a tweet saying, "The latest GLM imagery (1301Z) does suggest that the boom was a result of a meteor."

GLM stands for Geostationary Lightning Mapper, and an image with the tweet indicated some type of strike over northeast Ohio.

According to the National Weather Association, "GLM detects light from meteors partly because meteors look more like lightning than noise. Long, bright flares of light produced as bolides break up in the atmosphere can resemble continuous current lightning flashes in which a charged channel lights up for tens to hundreds of milliseconds."

“We have not heard of anything actually hitting the ground,” NWS meteorologist Brian Mitchell told the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

The meteor could have burned up in the atmosphere before hitting the ground, he said. Another NWS meteorologist, Jim Sullivan, said the sound people heard was most likely a sonic boom.

Several people shared video of a large fireball streaking across the sky.

The NWS office in Pittsburgh shared a video of the meteor shot by an employee there.

Sightings of a meteor were reported to the American Meteorological Society from more than a half a dozen states.

Another person wrote on X, "Heard it on the east side of Cleveland. Sounded like a bomb or dynamite going off. My house shook."

This is a developing story. Check back at weather.com for updates.

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