The possible celestial event happened at 6:40 p.m. Monday, Nov. 13, in Beltrami County. Video shared by Beltrami County Emergency Management shows the night sky filled with light for an instant — seconds before a loud explosion is heard.
“It rattled my windows and scared the soul out of my dog who was outside and demanded to be let in the house,” an emergency management spokesperson said in a Facebook post.
Dispatchers received reports of the “loud explosion” near Bemidji, but the Beltrami County Sheriff’s Office said the source is undetermined. There were also reports of the noise in adjacent counties, emergency management officials said.
Others said they also heard the loud boom and questioned what it could be. While some said it may have been caused by a transformer explosion, officials said a check of power substations indicated nothing was out of the ordinary.
The sheriff’s office and emergency management both speculated the flash and boom could’ve come from a meteor.
Chris Shaffer, the chief meteorologist for WCCO in Minneapolis, believes their speculation could be accurate.
“Based on my experience, I’ve seen a lot of videos over the years, and all the ingredients were kind of there, that you see the flash and hear the boom, and oftentimes when meteors enter our atmosphere that’s what they do, they burn up and they can create a sonic boom as well,” he said. “I checked local radar to see just how close to the surface that might’ve come and I couldn’t pick up anything so it happened pretty high up in the atmosphere.”
The Northern Taurid meteor shower is active until Dec. 2 and was expected to peak Nov. 11 and 12, according to the American Meteor Society. The Southern Taurid meteor shower is also active, and when the two are occurring at the same time, there is often an increase in fireball activity.
Bemidji is about 200 miles northwest of Minneapolis.
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