A fire ball explodes in the sky over California

Meteors from a small fire that erupted vortex, are distributedthroughout northern California.

Plotting the fire there was a meteor about 4 to 5 billion years old that exploded with a force equivalent to one third of the atomic bombdropped on Hiroshima during World War II. While events like thisoccur frequently, it is unusual to occur in populated areas.

"The opportunity to see something like that is very special," said DonYeomans of NASA. "Most of the meteors that you see in the nightsky, are the size of small stones or grains of sand, and trace theirlasting for one or two seconds."
Each rock weighing about 10 grams, said John T Wasso, an oldprofessor and meteor expert at UCLA's Institute of Geophysics andNuclear Physics.