Monday Hit With Unusual Severity in Virginia: With a Meteorite

"Meteorite punches hole in doctor's office"
Daily Press (January 21, 2010)

"Esther Lynch was sitting in Warwick Boulevard traffic around 5:20 p.m. Monday when a "football-sized fireball" whizzed across the Peninsula skyline.

" 'It was spectacular but I had no idea what it was,' said Lynch. '"I just knew it was something that was not of this world.'

"Turns out, Lynch was right.

"Lynch most likely saw a meteorite that moments later crashed into a two-story doctor's office in the Northern Virginia community of Lorton. No one was hurt in the incident...."

The meteorite hit on Monday, January 18, 2010.

"Meteorite Crashes Through Virginia Doctor's Office"
Space.com (January 21, 2010)


(Linda Welzenbach/Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, via FOXNews, used w/o permission)

"A small meteorite fell from the sky and crashed through the roof of a doctor's office in Virginia, but luckily no one was hit, experts say.

"The half-pound meteorite struck the Lorton, Va.-based office of Dr. Frank Ciampi, a general practice physician, on Monday evening while he was on the second floor of his two-story building.

" 'It went through the roof. It through one wall partition and then passed through a particle board ceiling into the floor of an examination room,' said Linda Welzenbach, manager of the meteorite collection at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, which confirmed that the object was indeed a meteorite from outer space. 'It's not really big. It's about the size of your fist.'..."

That fist-sized chunk of rock may have been going 200 miles an hour when it hit the roof.

This isn't all that common an event: the doctor's was Virginia's fourth recorded meteorite fall.

I suspect that they'll be reported a little more frequently: More people live in Virginia now, than when the State House was built in Jamestown, so someone's more likely to be nearby when these rocks come down.