Saturday’s fireball over Alberta could be first of many in coming months

An Edmonton scientist says February marks the start of fireball season. David Ewasuk has the story.

A bright fireball that streaked across the sky over Alberta on Saturday could be the first of many in the coming months.

“This is one of the best times of the year to see any bright fireballs,” said Frank Florian, the senior manager of the planetarium and space sciences at Telus World of Science Edmonton.

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Florian said February marks the start of “fireball season.”

“Usually the spring time is notoriously good for getting out there and seeing a lot of these great fireballs making their way across the sky,” Florian said.

“Not all of these things make their way down onto the ground. Most burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere but if you’re out and about from about now until the end of April you can probably see one of these fireballs,” he added.

Florian said the Earth is likely passing in part of its orbit where there’s a lot of derelict material from the solar system.

“Nothing substantial that’s going to hit the Earth like the one they’re talking about for 2032,” he said.

“Basically the Earth plows through this material and we encounter it and every spring we get this big uptake on fireball events.”

Around 7:45 p.m. MT, people from as far south as the Calgary area, north to Fort McKay and east in the Grande Prairie region spotted a green-coloured fireball.

“This particular fireball could have been seen from all over Alberta,” said Florian.

“It was bright enough that basically up near Fort McMurray and anywhere in the northern province area they would have seen it much, much higher in the sky over how we saw it here from the greater Edmonton area,” he added.

Florian said based on how bright the object was he’d guess it was about a metre to two metres in size.

“Still fairly sizeable which means that if it didn’t disintegrate totally in the atmosphere on re-entry it could have scattered some little bits of rock somewhere in Northern Alberta.

The American Meteor Society has 35 reports of the incident.

Florian said based on eyewitness reports it’s likely the fireball moved east to west just north of Slave Lake.

“We don’t know if anything from this object may have came down,” he said, adding the snowy conditions could make finding anything difficult.

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s David Ewasuk