ATLANTA, GA — Several people in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee reported seeing a large fireball falling from the sky on Thursday afternoon.

This timing coincides with the Bootid meteor showers which peaks on June 27.

According to the International Meteor Organization, the shower is active from June 22 to June 27.

Meteorologist Christina Edwards tells WSB Radio that there are other annual meteor showers this time of year.

The American Meteor Society says that more than 120 reports of a fireball spotted just before 12:30 p.m. on Thursday.

“Numerous observers in the southeastern United States have filed reports of a bright daylight fireball today, Thursday, June 26, at 12:25 p.m. EDT,” according to Bill Cooke, lead, NASA’s Meteoroid Environments Office at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

Cooke says the analysis of eyewitness accounts, camera, satellite, infrasound and doppler weather radar data led to the following information about the event:

1. The meteor was first seen at an altitude of 48 miles above the town of Oxford, Georgia, moving southwest at 30,000 miles per hour.
2. It disintegrated 27 miles above West Forest, Georgia, unleashing an energy of about 20 tons of TNT. The resulting pressure wave propagated to the ground, creating booms heard by many in that area.
3. The fireball was produced by an asteroidal fragment 3 feet in diameter, weighing over a ton.
4. The Geostationary Lightning Mappers onboard NOAA’s GOES satellites detected the fireball and provided estimates of its location and energy.
5. Multiple doppler weather radars detected the signatures of meteorites falling to the ground. 

The National Weather Service in Peachtree City speculates it was a meteor but could not confirm that fact.

According to NASA, fireballs are “exceptionally bright meteors that are spectacular enough to to be seen over a very wide area”.

WSB Radio’s Ann Powell contributed to this story.