Hello Tom,
Here's what I saw as I was driving home on the night of
the PF fall. The sky brightened for about 3 seconds (with
an electric-blue color), which corresponded to the 2 flashes
from the meteor as they occured above the clouds, with the
light obviously filtering through the clouds. The light
brightened and I noticed it concentrating toward the S/SE,
and followed it visually. That's when I saw the fireball,
as it fell just below the cloud base. It was plainly
visible, including 3 fragments that trailed off behind and
to the west of the main fireball (to the right of it from my
vantage point north-west of where it fell). There was no
question of it being below the cloud-deck, as the sky was
pretty much broken overcast, and with all of the light
pollution in this area, the cloud base itself was easily
visible. So to summarize, the initial flashes from the
meteor as it was falling were seen above the clouds, but the
fireball itself, about 1 second before it extinguished, was
below the plainly-visible cloud deck. As for the 7000 foot
height, I called the NWS a few months ago inquiring about
the cloud ceiling height on that night, and was given that
value. I'm still trying to locate data from other sources
that can refute or corroborate what the staffer told me at
that time.
(My original accounting of the view is here:
http://dave-j.freeservers.com/ParkForest/parkforest_meteor.html
)
Dave Johnson
=
Tom Said:
Hello List, I don't remember exactly what was all said about
the PF
fireball. What I do think I remember is it is thought that
the large flash
seen was below the clouds that were at 7000 ft? I always
thought that
sounded a little low.
What do you think of this? I was just out side hoping to
see an October
fireball. We have a layer of cirrus clouds blowing in. One
of the large
clouds covering my house looked to have bright lightning
flashing within it.
I thought, this is weird, I did not think there was any
clouds besides the
cirrus. These were very bright flashes!!! Well a few minutes
later I figured
it out. An airplane flew out from above the thin cloud, it's
white strobe
was making the flashes. The clouds seemed to have magnified
the white light.
the red and green directional lights were not visible.
So I am thinking the same thing happened at PF, the flash
was above the
clouds and looked like it was below. That's my theory and I
am sticking to
it!
Thanks, Tom
Peregrineflier
The proudest member of the IMCA 6168
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