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Meteor triggers boom heard across parts of US northeast

24htopnews | May 31, 2026 10:41 AM CST

Massachusetts: Reports of an explosion from people across New England Saturday afternoon sent police agencies and others scrambling to understand what caused a double boom that shook buildings in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

The American Meteor Society said Saturday that the boom was actually a meteor about 3 feet wide entering the atmosphere around the New Hampshire border with Massachusetts, north of Boston.

Robert Lunsford, the Fireball Program Monitor with the society, said the group received dozens of reports from Delaware to Montreal with people either hearing the double boom, feeling the ground shake or seeing the fireball — which he said looks like a shooting star in the daytime sky.

#MeteorSighting: Eyewitnesses in New England and @NOAA’s GOES-19 satellite reported a bright fireball on Saturday, May 30, at 2:06 p.m EDT accompanied by a loud noise. The meteor appears to have fragmented at an altitude of 40 miles over northeast MA and southeast NH. The energy…
— NASA Space Alerts (@NASASpaceAlerts) May 30, 2026

“It was definitely bigger than a normal fireball, about a yard wide,” he said.

But Lunsford said it’s unlikely the meteor struck the ground.

“We would need more information about the trajectory the speed and other aspects to know for sure if it hit the ground, but if it didn’t burn up, then it would have landed in the ocean,” he said. “Most of them do burn up before they hit the ground.”

People in a handful of states posted on social media about feeling the buildings they were in shaking. Several videos posted on X also captured what sounded like two quick booms, with no fire, smoke or other visual causes around 2:30 pm.