You aren’t just seeing things — there are greater balls of fire in the sky

Here’s an excellent reason to keep looking up, thanks to the American Meteor Society: not just great but greater balls of fire overhead in recent months. While it’s nothing to worry about, according to AMS — neither an alien invasion nor any measurable increase in the risk of impact — there does seem to be a statistical spike now underway in “large fireball” reports coming in from people all around the planet. “AMS logged an unprecedented concentration of major fireballs” in mid-March, the agency reported at the end of the month. What is a fireball? It’s a meteor — a chunk of space debris — that hits our atmosphere at astronomical speed and starts to burn due to friction and compression. Many meteors become tiny white “shooting stars” that disappear from view almost immediately. But meteors that seem to have some bulk, and burn exceptionally brightly, are called fireballs. Fireballs can be really spectacular, glowing different colors (red, orange, yellow, even blue) and even putting off glowing “trains” of ionized particles, or trails of smoke. Jim Todd, the space science education director at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, keeps an eye on fireball reports. There’s no doubt about unusual local fireball activity in the sky in recent weeks, he said. “On Monday, March 23, at 6:06 a.m., viewers across the Pacific Northwest witnessed a brilliant green fireball,” Todd noted in a press release. “While no major meteor shower is currently active, this event follows a string of high-profile sightings — including a daytime fireball that triggered a sonic boom in Ohio on March 17 and a meteorite strike on a Texas home on March 21.” Days later, Todd issued an update: “According to the American Meteor Society … viewers from the Pacific Northwest saw a bright (orange) fireball due north on Saturday evening (March 28) around 8:40 p.m.” That’s a lot of fireball reports within just a few weeks, he said, and people are noticing the trend. “Naturally, these back-to-back events have heightened public awareness,” Todd wrote. “Is fireball activity actually increasing, or does it just feel that way?” The answer appears to be a little of both. According to an analysis posted by the American Meteor Society — a nonprofit science project based in New York state — in the first quarter of 2026, the total number of fireballs reported did not change much from previous year averages. The number of really large, bright fireballs witnessed by many people, however, rose dramatically. Fireball events noticed by 25 or more people rose by 42 percent. Fireball events witnessed by 50 or more people doubled. That’s a “significant surge in large fireballs events,” AMS said. It’s not a statistical or reporting error, AMS added. It appears to be a genuine shift in the size and brightness of incoming space rocks. “If this were simply a matter of more people filing reports, we would expect a proportional increase” in all reports of all event sizes, AMS said. Instead, what’s happening is more eyewitnesses of larger, brighter events only. The reality of larger fireballs plunging into Earth’s atmosphere is confirmed by corresponding reports of sonic booms, AMS added. “In short,” Todd concluded, “we aren’t necessarily being hit by more rocks — we are simply being hit by larger, more noticeable ones.” Nobody is exactly sure why it’s happening, AMS said. You can browse fireball and meteor eyewitness reports from all around the world at fireball.amsmeteors.org.

Related Stories