Did a meteorite slam into a Georgia house? Dash cam video captures a fireball falling from the sky

Hundreds reported seeing a fireball falling from heaven on June 26. Objects from the fireball crashed into a house, says a Georgia man just south of Atlanta. Reportedly, the fireball penetrated the roof and ceiling and cracked the laminate of the house.

A bright object glimpsed streaking across the sky recently caused  a commotion as residents in Georgia and other southern states rushed to film a mysterious "fireball."

Reports flooded the American Meteor Society of sightings on Thursday, and scientists scrambled to determine just exactly what it was that caused the stir.

Meanwhile, one poor Georgian may have gotten a closer look at the object than most people saw from miles away after pieces of it possibly crashed through a home south of Atlanta.

So, what was it? Unsurprisingly, meteorologists and other scientists theorize it was almost certainly a meteor.

Did a meteor crash in Georgia?

Remnants of the cosmic object that was witnessed soaring across Georgia around 12:30 p.m. local time Thursday, June 26, may have broken off and plummeted through the roof of a home in Henry County, according to the the National Weather Service in Peachtree City.

CEILING OF GEORGIA RESIDENT HENRY COUNTY

A resident in the county, located south of Atlanta, reported that a "rock" fell through the roof and then broke through the ceiling, cracking the home's laminate flooring. Because the incident occurred around the time sightings were happening, "we are presuming that a piece of the object fell through their roof," the weather service said in a post on Facebook.

What was the 'fireball'?

The fireball that caught the attention of people across the Southeast U.S. is presumed to be from a meteor fragmenting in the sky, according to meteorologists and other experts.

Bill Cooke, the chief of NASA’s Meteoroid Environments Office at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, told the USA TODAY Network that the space rock was about three feet in diameter and weighed more than one ton.

When it was first spotted, the meteor was moving southwest at 30,000 miles per hour, he added.

Where was the 'fireball' meteorite seen?

The American Meteor Society received nearly 150 reports of a meteor bright enough to be seen streaking across the midday sky beginning around noon local time Thursday, June 26.

Most of the reports were from Georgia and South Carolina, but a few witnessed the object in Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, and North Carolina.

The National Weather Service office in Charleston said on Facebook that its satellite-based lightning detection system showed “a streak within cloud free sky” over Gasburg, Virginia, near the state's border with North Carolina.

Some people also reported experiencing what they believed were earthquakes, which meteorologists have since clarified were sonic booms. The brief, thunder-like noises are often heard from the ground when spacecraft, aircraft, or itinerant space rocks travel faster than the speed of sound.

That's because when the meteor disintegrated 27 miles above West Forest, Georgia, it unleashed the energy of about 20 tons of TNT, Cooke said.

What is a fireball? How rare is a 'fireball' meteor?

Rocks in space are known as meteoroids. If those space rocks enter Earth's atmosphere, they become meteors that streak across the sky in events colloquially referred to as "shooting stars."

Meteors – or fragments of them – that survive their atmospheric trip and land on the surface without burning up become meteorites, according to NASA.

What many witnessed recently was a very bright meteor known as a fireball associated with the annual Bootid meteor shower. It's relatively rare for fireballs to be sighted on Earth, especially during the daytime, as the objects generally have to be at least as bright as Venus to be visible to the naked eye, according to the American Meteor Society.