RENO. Nevada – A fiery meteor created a thundering explosion and
traced a rare daylight fireball seen for about 600 miles across
Nevada and California, before apparently breaking up harmlessly
at high altitude, astronomers said. NASA researchers at the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory said the midair explosion Sunday, centered
over California's Central Valley just east of the San Francisco
area, was the equivalent of the detonation of about 3.8 kilotons
of TNT -- about one quarter the energy released by the atomic
bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945. "The meteor was
probably about the size of an SUV," said Donald Yeomans, manager
of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the laboratory,
which is in Pasadena, Calif. "This was a big one. An event of
this size might happen about once a year, but most of them occur
over the ocean or an uninhabited area." 'The meteor was probably
about the size of an SUV.' - Donald Yeomans, manager of NASA's
Near-Earth Object Program Office There were no reports Monday
that any