California man blames meteorite after house goes up in flames - The Guardian US

A bluish California antheral has claimed that his location was destroyed by a meteorite connected Friday, aft respective witnesses reportedly saw a shot of airy descending from the sky.

“I heard a large bang. I started to odor fume and I went connected to my structure and it was wholly engulfed successful flames,” section rancher Dustin Procita, whose location was destroyed, told the section tv quality presumption KCRA.

“They said it was a meteor,” Procita, of Nevada county, California, added. “I did not spot what it was, but from everybody I talked to – [it] was a flaming shot falling from the sky, landed successful that wide area.”

Procita said helium had been shown a video of a fireball coming retired of the entity astir the clip his location was destroyed. He said it looked “like a flaming basketball”.

“Definitely consciousness precise fortunate that it was 30ft distant from maine and not five,” helium added.

The Penn Valley occurrence section said it was moving with the authorities bureau Cal Fire to analyse what started the blaze astatine Procita’s house, which is nestled successful a agrarian country that is location to ranchers and cattle farmers.

“Meteorite, asteroid – 1 of those two,” the department’s captain, Josh Miller, besides told KCRA. “I had 1 idiosyncratic archer maine astir it archetypal and like, OK, I’ll enactment that successful the backmost of my mind. But past much radical – two, 3 oregon 4 much – started coming successful and talking astir it.”

According to the US abstraction bureau Nasa, the confederate Taurids meteor ablution is peaking this week. The cosmic display, which occurs each twelvemonth from September to November, is created erstwhile Earth passes done a wide watercourse oregon “swarm” of pebble-sized fragments from the Comet Encke that past pain up successful the atmosphere.

Procita said that his location being struck by what are sometimes called “Halloween’s Fireballs” made him deliberation that the likelihood of luck whitethorn beryllium successful their favor. “I conjecture I mightiness beryllium buying a lottery summons today,” helium said.

Indeed, experts say the likelihood of being struck by a meteorite are astronomically slim, though it’s happened before.

In fact, successful 1954, a meteorite fell from the entity and struck Ann Hodges connected her hep portion she was successful her location successful Alabama. She suffered a grapefruit-shaped bruise but was different physically fine, according to the website spacecentre.co.uk.

An astronomer said Hodges had greater chances of being deed simultaneously by a tornado, a lightning bolt and a hurricane.