Rare bolide illuminates RGV: Expert says meteorite may have landed in Mexico

It’s usually a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence for most people.

At 8:32 p.m. on April 28, a bright flash in the sky was visible from across the Rio Grande Valley, at least as far north as Linn, and south into northern Mexico.

It was an exploding meteor, or fireball, technically known as a bolide, and it was witnessed by hundreds of people at the very least, this reporter included.

Mike Hankey, operations manager of the American Meteor Society, said the group received 19 reports of the event, which was accompanied by a sonic boom or deep rumbling sound, according to some witnesses. Others reported no sound, just a bright tail then greenish flash from the explosion, all of it lasting just a few seconds.

From Brownsville, the bolide, a chunk of asteroid possibly the size of a bowling ball or grocery cart, could be seen descending rapidly from the upper left of the southwestern sky to the lower right, the flash followed by a brief orange tracer — the burning remnants of the meteor post-explosion, according to Hankey.

An asteroid is a “rocky body” in space larger than 1 meter (a little over 3 feet), and asteroids smaller than 1 meter are called meteoroids, he said. That’s not to be confused with a meteor, which can be a fragment of an asteroid or a comet, and is the thing you see streaking across the sky — whether it’s a silent “shooting star” the size of a grain of sand or a spectacular, loud, bowling-ball-sized bolide, Hankey said.

Comets are a mixture of ice and frozen gas, pieces of which can’t survive entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, though meteors from asteroids sometimes can. When a chunk of meteor lands on Earth, it’s called a meteorite.

“A meteorite is the rock on the ground that’s found, recovered, held in your hand,” Hankey said. “So it’s a meteor when it’s in the sky, meteorite when it’s in the hand, and it’s a meteoroid in space, or an asteroid or a comet.”

There are three main classes of meteorite, most of them composed of metal and rock, he said.

“There’s some meteorites that are just solid iron,” Hankey said. “Most, like 90 percent, of meteorites are a mixture of metal and rock. There’s some meteorites that have gemstones in them. There’s some really rare meteorites that come from the moon. It’s literally a moon rock. There’s some that come from Mars.”

It was the second heavenly visitation for the Valley this year so far. A meteor landed near Mission on Feb. 15 accompanied by a window-rattling sonic boom. If the April 28 bolide produced a meteorite, the likely trajectory based on witness reports would have had it landing in Mexico, Hankey said.

A meteorite is the rock on the ground that’s found, recovered, held in your hand. So it’s a meteor when it’s in the sky, meteorite when it’s in the hand, and it’s a meteoroid in space, or an asteroid or a comet.

A review of weather radar, which can detect meteorites, failed to turn up anything, though “it’s still possible,” he said.

“Radar is not always effective,” Hankey said. “It misses a lot.”

At any rate, anyone who witnessed the fireball should consider themselves extremely lucky, because it’s unlikely they’ll ever see another one. Most people never even see one. And while bolides occur with “blanket randomness” around the planet on a daily basis, they only happen four or five times a year in South Texas and only last only about five seconds, so they’re easy to miss, Hankey said.

“It’s usually a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence for most people,” he said. “I’ve only seen a couple my whole life, and I do this all the time, outside looking.”

If you have photos or videos of the event that you’d like to submit, send it over to [email protected] with the appropriate credit and the location it was captured at.