Residents in Cleveland, Ohio were startled after hearing “loud booms” and a “series of rumbling,” on Tuesday morning at around 9 am Eastern time.“Sounded like a few sonic booms, and then rumbling,” one puzzled Reddit user wrote. “Not entirely consistent with aircraft, or thunder.”“Should I be concerned I heard it sounded like someone dropped something heavy on the roof of my building,” another spooked resident added.Officials from the National Weather Service have since confirmed that the booms were likely a “result of a meteor,” a fireball that broke the sound barrier as it entered the Earth’s atmosphere.A map built using data from NASA’s Geostationary Lightning Mapper showed the location of the significant flare-up. And a video shared by the National Weather Service in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, shows the meteor lighting up against the blue morning sky as it tumbles toward the ground.One of our employees, Jared Rackley, caught this morning's meteor on camera from the Pittsburgh area. pic.twitter.com/2LdqOpChti— NWS Pittsburgh (@NWSPittsburgh) March 17, 2026The terminology surrounding the forceful celestial events is confusing. Meteoroids are rocks that travel through space. Once they hit the Earth’s atmosphere, they heat up and turn into meteors, often erroneously referred to as “shooting stars.” Once they hit the ground and cool down, they become meteorites.Our planet’s atmosphere protects us from an estimated 97,000 pounds of meteoritic material in just a single day. Most of the material vaporizes as it heats up, while small remaining amounts can survive the ordeal and plummet down to the surface, punching through roofs or smashing into the ground right next to particularly unfortunate individuals.However, the chances of being hit by a meteorite are fortunately infinitesimally slim.While some were shaken by the latest meteor strike, other netizens joked about the intense natural phenomenon.“Another reason why Cleveland is the center of the universe,” one user tweeted.More on meteors: Amazing Telescope Photo Shows Comet Breaking Apart Into Huge ChunksThe post Deafening Explosions in the Sky Rock Northeast Ohio appeared first on Futurism.