A loud boom that rattled windows across Boston on Saturday turned out not to be an attack but a meteor blast, and authorities and residents are still sorting through eyewitness reports and preliminary scientific data about the event.

When initial reports of loud explosions hit social media, many people feared the worst. Those fears eased once investigators identified the cause as a meteor exploding in the atmosphere rather than a deliberate incident. The idea that a natural object produced that kind of sound surprised a lot of folks, but it also explained why so many calls came into newsrooms across the region.

A meteor exploded off the coast of Massachusetts, causing a loud boom to be heard throughout the state Saturday afternoon, according to WBZ-TV chief meteorologist Eric Fisher. 

It was heard around 2:11 p.m. Eastern Time, with people describing a sudden bang that rattled windows, startled pets, and even shook some homes. Dozens of phone calls came into the WBZ-TV newsroom reporting a loud explosion heard around Boston, as far as Ipswich and Johnston, Rhode Island.

According to preliminary reports submitted to the American Meteor Society, dozens of people across the Northeast reported seeing the fireball around 2 p.m. Saturday. Sightings stretched across multiple states, helping scientists piece together the meteor’s path through the atmosphere. 

Scientists rely heavily on those eyewitness reports to reconstruct how a meteor moved and where it broke up. When dozens of independent observers report a bright fireball and a loud detonation, researchers can triangulate the trajectory and estimate where fragments might have fallen. Preliminary submissions to monitoring groups like the American Meteor Society are often the first step in turning scattered reports into a coherent path through the sky.

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Local reaction underlined how startling the event was: people described windows trembling and pets reacting to the sudden noise. Reports centered on the early afternoon timeframe, which helped narrow down when the meteor entered the atmosphere and disintegrated. That timing, plus the spread of sightings across several states, gave scientists useful data points to analyze the energy and altitude of the explosion.

Not all loud sky booms are meteors; sometimes they come from aircraft or other sources that create sonic booms. This week, for instance, a separate incident in South Carolina produced a similar wave of calls and bewildered residents who felt shaking and heard a deep boom. Officials and observers quickly compared notes because distinguishing an earthquake, a sonic boom, or a meteor event matters for both public safety and scientific understanding.

A loud booming noise startled many South Carolina residents as they were getting home from work late Thursday afternoon, raising questions about what caused the sound and shaking that hit parts of Columbia. The U.S. Geological Survey reports that the phenomenon is consistent with a sonic boom, instead of an earthquake like those that have been recorded in the state this year.

Sonic booms can occur when aircraft, meteorites or other rapidly moving objects exceed the speed of sound. But the source of the booming sound was still unknown Friday afternoon. Shaw Air Force Base, one of the biggest military installations in central South Carolina, said it had no aircraft in the area of Columbia where the boom was reportedly centered.

When experts call a sound consistent with a sonic boom, they mean the pressure wave matches what happens when something breaks the sound barrier. Meteor explosions are one kind of source, but so are supersonic jets and re-entering space debris. Investigators look for radar returns, satellite detections, and corroborating eyewitness accounts to rule out other explanations.

Atmospheric detonations from meteors are often brief but powerful, producing both a bright fireball and a concussion that can be heard and felt on the ground. Most meteors are small and burn up high in the atmosphere without any noticeable effects at surface level, but larger fragments can produce loud booms and even shake structures. Events like Saturday’s serve as a reminder that our atmosphere is constantly encountering debris from space, and occasionally that debris announces itself quite loudly.

Officials and scientists continue to compile reports and data to better define where the meteor traveled and how much energy it released. That ongoing analysis helps determine whether any fragments reached the surface and contributes to long-term monitoring of near-Earth objects. For residents, the immediate takeaway was relief that the boom was natural rather than hostile.

As long as it’s not terrorism, we’re good. People will keep reporting strange events, and researchers will keep turning those observations into clearer answers about what actually happened in the sky that day.