NASA confirmed the source of a loud bang heard across much of the northeastern seaboard was a meteor breaking up in the atmosphere about 40 miles above Massachusetts.
NASA, in a statement on X, said the event occurred at 2:06 p.m. on Saturday afternoon. A loud bang was heard across Cambridge and Somerville with police scanners in Somerville picking up Somerville Police Department chatter at 2:16 p.m. about several reports of a possible explosion. The noise was heard across Rhode Island, Eastern Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire. NASA said the sounds came from the meteor’s fragmentation, which released energy equivalent to 300 tons of TNT. It also posted an update on where meteor fragments had scattered.
Cambridge Police sent out a Citywide Alert at 3:11 p.m. reporting that the department was aware of the ‘loud boom,’ and noting that it had been reported by several Cambridge residents and across the region.
Police Spokesman Sergeant Robert Reardon told Cambridge Day police had received “a number of calls from concerned community members.”
Reardon said the cause of the noise was unknown, but there were no “known incidents or resulting hazards in Cambridge that are connected.”
WBZ-TV Chief Meteorologist Eric Fisher said in a post on Instagram that the bang was caused by a meteor which “exploded off the South Shore.” He pointed to lightning satellite data which signaled a large release of energy slightly off the coast at the time of the bang, a phenomenon which usually corresponds with meteors entering the atmosphere and exploding.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s GOES-19 Geostationary Lightning Mapper Satellite imagery showed a concentrated burst of lightning flashes off the coast and over much of Cape Cod at 2:11 p.m.
Somerville’s police department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This story was updated to add details from NASA’s confirmation that the source of the loud noise was a meteor.
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