Rare meteor sighting turns heads in GTA

Experts say phenomenon happens every five to 10 years

A flash of light was spotted by dozens of GTA residents on Sunday evening as a meteor weighing several tonnes streaked across the city sky.

Data gathered by the Meteor Physics Group at Western University in London, Ont., showed the meteor entered the atmosphere around 4:17 p.m. and was 50 to 100 centimetres wide.

Peter Brown, a professor at Western and a member of the group, said the incident was relatively rare. Al- though a meteor of that size hits the Earth twice a week, a similar phenomenon can be seen only once every five to 10 years around the GTA. “If it had hit at night, it would have lit everything up. It would have been so spectacular, it would have lit up the landscape and people would have been talking about it as if it had been daylight,” he said. The meteor struck the atmosphere with a force of around 10 to 20 tonnes of TNT, according to the group. While it is impossible to determine its exact trajectory, Brown believes the meteor soared on a southwest-to-northeast trajectory. Social media sites were abuzz, with several Twitter users claiming they saw trails of white smoke and flashes of light in the sky. A user on Reddit told the Star he saw a “huge flash” while driving his car on the Gardiner Expressway. “It flashed once more lighter then (sic) before and then went out leaving a jagged white smoke trail straight down,” he said. “Leads me to believe it couldn’t be a firework as it was shooting straight down and was in the sky not off a building or anything.” There were also reports of a light in the sky over Burlington and Oshawa. It was also seen around Peterborough.