February 28, 2020 – Earlier today a loud sound was heard and a flash seen in western parts of Croatia, and after initial confusion, it turns out it was a – meteor explosion.
Allow me to preface this by saying that I have personally heard it. An ear-witness, if you will. Sometime around 10:30 this morning, as I was sitting in my chair, working on another TCN piece, I heard a loud, deep rumbling, unlike the usual sounds happening in my neighbourhood around this time of day. My first thought was that there was a very large truck in the very narrow street beneath my window, but there was no truck. Then I concluded it must’ve been an earthquake, and even convinced myself that I felt it (years of listening to true crime podcasts will allow you to realize how much our perceptions of what’s happening around us depend on what we expect is happening).
Other have heard it too, of course. First tweets came within minutes:
Potres u Zg
— Fran Kušeta (@FranKuseta) February 28, 2020
(It’s comforting to know that, in the first minutes, when we didn’t know what exactly happened, many people shared how they also *felt* the earthquake, in addition to hearing the loud sound.)
What got us even more convinced we were right with our earthquake theory was a tweet by a scientific organisation collecting seismic data, who said that there was a potential earthquake in Zagreb too:
#Earthquake (#potres) possibly felt 2 min ago in #Grad Zagreb #Croatia. Felt it? See https://t.co/wPtMW5ND1t pic.twitter.com/LE6m2ykyqk
— EMSC (@LastQuake) February 28, 2020
But, after a few more minutes, reports started coming that it was not an earthquake, that the machines have not seen the shaking of the ground, and the next theory was that the Croatian airforce aeroplanes (again) broke the sound barrier. They do that a lot, actually surprisingly often considering the situation in the Croatian airforce, but honestly – I was certain right away that this sound wasn’t it! I’ve heard the sound barrier thing many, many times from the same chair, and this sounded nothing like it!
And then, a real space surprise: a report from Istria that it was, in fact, a meteor explosion, happening somewhere over Croatia, which could both be seen and heard!
The meteor explosion, of course, hasn’t happened “over Istria”, as Croatian Astronomical Society correctly stated later, as it happened at a height of over 30 kilometres (based on the time between the visible flash and when the sound was heard) and it was heard in most places in northern and western Croatia, in Slovenia and in parts of Italy. No material damage has been reported, and the astronomers plan to search for the meteorite remains on the ground, once they manage to triangulate its location.
And the videos like the one recorded by Tomislav Čar on his dashcam will certainly help with that:
