7-ton meteor ignites 'fireball' over Ohio as massive boom rattles homes across multiple states

CLEVELAND, OHIO: A quiet morning in northern Ohio turned upside down on Tuesday, March 17, when a massive boom tore through the air, enough to shake windows and send everyone scrambling for answers.

People from Cleveland all the way out to the suburbs heard the sonic boom around 9 am.

Most people thought something awful had happened, like a building collapse or a factory blowing up. Turns out, the real culprit wasn’t even from Earth.

A fireball in broad daylight

A large 7-ton meteor reportedly struck near the Cleveland, Ohio, area, on March 17, 2026, after fragmenting in the air, according to NASA.

"A very bright daylight fireball was observed by witnesses from the northeast US and Canada this morning, March 17," NASA wrote. "An analysis of currently available data places first visibility of the meteor above Lake Erie."

NASA explained that the meteor broke into fragments before striking the Earth.

"The fireball - caused by a small asteroid nearly 6 feet in diameter and weighing about 7 tons - moved southeast at 45,000 mph before fragmenting over Valley City. The fragments continued on to the south, producing meteorites in the vicinity of Medina County, Ohio," the agency wrote.

Many eyewitnesses in the states of Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, the District of Columbia and the Canadian province of Ontario have filed reports on the American Meteor Society website of a very bright daylight fireball seen March 17 at 8:57 AM Eastern Daylight Time

Many videos captured the meteor as it flew toward Earth.

The sonic boom felt across states

That pressure wave produced a sonic boom so strong it was heard, and in some cases felt, across multiple states, from Ohio to Pennsylvania and beyond.

The American Meteor Society said it received reports from Wisconsin to Maryland. NASA later confirmed that it was a meteor nearly 6 feet (1.83 meters) in diameter.

“This one really does look like it’s a fireball, which means it’s a meteorite -- a small asteroid,” said astronomer Carl Hergenrother, the group's executive director.

Reports of the “boom” followed by a “rumble” came from all corners of northeast Ohio and beyond. People as far as Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and southeastern Michigan reported hearing or seeing the meteor to WJW.

People living in Northeast Ohio felt their homes shake hard, stuff tumbled off shelves, and pictures slipped off the walls.

The noise? Some said it sounded like thunder. Others swore it was more like an explosion, only there was nothing they could see outside to explain it.

Even seismic sensors caught faint tremors just as everything happened, making it feel like something really unusual was going on.

The meteor "was also detected by the Geostationary Lightning Mapper on the GOES satellite and several cameras in the region," NASA reported.

The asteroid "unleashed an energy of 250 tons of TNT when it fragmented, resulting in a pressure wave which propagated to the ground, causing the booms and explosive noises heard by many of the public." It may have also shook houses north of Medina.