Valley’s 1st recorded meteorite fall reported
Cody Horvath noticed the black rock standing out like a sore thumb amid the tan gravel of his north Glendale yard.
He picked it up to toss it into the street.
The rock was a deep black and looked like it had been dipped in tar.
Horvath, 38, had been a rock buff growing up, so he took his find inside. The more he examined the stone, the more convinced he was about its origin.
“Found a meteorite in the front yard,” he texted his wife and in-laws.
The meteorite that landed in Horvath’s yard is the Valley’s first-ever recorded meteorite fall, and only the fifth in Arizona, according to ASU professor Laurence Garvie, curator of the university’s Center for Meteorite Studies.
Meteorite “falls” occur when witnesses see meteorites fall from the sky, and the stones are then tracked to the ground.
Meteorite falls are far less common than meteorite “finds,” which occur when a meteorite is found but no one is certain when or how it got there. There
have been 164 meteorite finds in Arizona.
“We have this fall that just occurred here in the Valley, just quietly,” Garvie said. “That’s what is so amazing.”
The meteorite fall occurred around 8:30 p.m. on July 27. Eleven Valley residents from Queen Creek to Glendale reported to the American Meteor Society that they saw fireballs in the sky.
Garvie said it’s likely that July monsoon storms prevented more people from noticing the fireball because they may have confused it with lightning. On the evening of July 27, lighter, weaker thunderstorms dotted the north Valley, said National Weather Service meteorologist Andrew Deemer.
Horvath didn’t discover the meteorite in his yard until Aug. 14, two weeks later, and suspects the stone may have been covered by leaves part of that time. He emailed photos of the meteorite to ASU’s Garvie after doing a web search and discovering the professor’s meteorite research online.
Garvie drove to Horvath’s house on Friday to examine the meteorite with two professional meteorite hunters: Robert Ward and Ruben Garcia. They found fragments of the meteorite in the yard.
Where there is one meteorite, there are likely more nearby, Garvie said.
He is asking anyone within 2 miles of Deer Valley Road and 75th Avenue in Glendale to look for black rocks in their yard that weren’t there before. He encourages them to take pictures and email them to him at lgarvie@asu.edu.
Garvie said Ward purchased the meteorite for an undisclosed amount, and ASU will receive a chunk at no cost for scientific analysis.
Garvie plans to write a report on the meteorite, which he will submit to the Meteoritical Society for verification.
If all goes as planned, the meteorite fall will eventually have an official name: “Glendale,” after the city where it was found.
“We have this fall that just occurred here in the Valley, just quietly. That’s what is so amazing.” Laurence Garvie Curator of ASU’s Center for Meteorite Studies