On This Day in 2013: Chelyabinsk Meteor | WeatherBug
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On This Day in 2013: Chelyabinsk Meteor

February 15, 2021
By WeatherBug's Christopher Smith
Today marks the eight-year anniversary of a major meteor crash in Russia.

The residents of Chelyabinsk, Russia, had a rude and scary awakening shortly after daybreak on February 15, 2013. A meteor weighing more than 11,000 tons, equivalent to the weight of at least a few thousand elephants, shot into the atmosphere at an incredible speed of 41,600 mph, about 20 times as fast as the world’s fastest aircraft that travels at 2,100 mph. Friction caused the meteor to catch fire and then explode 14.5 miles above the ground.

Massive energy was released as a result of the meteor explosion. When compared to the Hiroshima atomic bomb, the meteor explosion was 30 times as powerful. As a result, a shock wave swept through Chelyabinsk, Russia, blowing out windows across a 200-mile radius, which is slightly less than the length of the state of Georgia. The blast injured 1,600 people with most people injured as a result of being hit by broken glass.

Although the meteor exploded miles above Earth’s surface, parts of the rock did rain down to the ground. In addition, hundreds of tons of dust were deposited and trapped in Earth's stratosphere. NASA was able to observe a thin stratospheric “dust belt” with its NASA-NOAA Suomi National satellite for more than 3 months following the blast and tracked the dust moving around the entire planet.

The Chelyabinsk Meteor was the largest strike over Russia since 1908 when a meteor struck parts of Siberia.

Source: nasa.gov, artsandculture.google.com
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Story Image: The meteor trail above Chelyabinsk, Russia, February 15, 2013 (Wikimedia Commons).