It was a meteor about the size of a big beach ball, moving at close to 98 times the speed of sound.
That’s according to data released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) concerning the fireball that lit up the sky and shook the ground in the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley on March 3.
Data from the Geostationary Lightning Mapper on the GOES (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites) 18 satellite shows the meteor became visible 58 miles (98 km) over Coquitlam, moving “a bit east of north “at 75,000 miles per hour (33 km per second), or Mach 97.74.
Energy measured is estimated in the order of 10 tons of TNT, suggesting that the object producing the fireball weighed about 166 pounds (75km) and had a diameter of 15 inches (38cm), roughly the size of a large beach ball.
It travelled 44 miles (71 km) through the upper atmosphere before disintegrating at an altitude of 41 miles (65 km) above Greenmantle Mountain in the Misty Icefields area near Garibaldi Park, about 80-90 kilometers north-northwest of Langley.
Bright lights flashed then there was a boom that rattled parts of the Lower Mainland Tuesday night. Initially speculation is a meteor. pic.twitter.com/NVQPiE82D1
— Langley Advance Times (@LangleyTimes) March 4, 2026
As well as the Fraser Valley and Lower Mainland regions, sightings were reported from as far away as Comox on Vancouver Island and Clinton in Washington State, just north of Seattle.
Witnesses described seeing two flashes of light followed by a delayed sonic boom, loud enough to shake the ground and cause the Earthquakes Canada seismograph in Haney to spike shortly after 9 p.m.
On Facebook, there were sightings reported in Langley, Surrey and North Delta. Aldergrove resident Jessika Houston described how “my house trembled and a boom went off so loud that I heard it inside my house and noted the time.”
In online reports posted by the American Meteor Society (AMS), a non-profit scientific organization for amateur and professional astronomers, Comox resident Jim. S called it “larger, brighter and much closer than any meteor I have ever observed.”
B.C. resident Lee-Ann W., a longtime star gazer and meteor shower watcher, described it as “the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in the night sky.”
Port Coquitlam resident Simon Hardy-Francis, who posted a video to the AMS website, reported seeing flashes of light, then hearing a loud boom three minutes later, with local seismographs reacting “at exactly 9:12.”
In Merritt, Candice W. enthused it was “incredible and felt like such a once in a lifetime experience and I’ll never forget it!”
Another Merritt resident, Ryan T. called it “super cool! [The] second time I’ve seen a decent-sized green meteor burning across the sky.”