Meteorite Lands In Lorton, Virginia

On Monday at just around 5:45 in the late afternoon Marc Gallini and Frank Ciampi were having the usual day of seeing their patients at the Williamsburg Family Practice in Lorton, Virginia when they heard a crash in one of the examining rooms.

　

　

"The first thing I thought of was that Dr. Gallini's bookshelf fell on him," Ciampi told a WUSA9 TV crew.

The fist-size rock had crashed through the roof, a fire wall and the room's ceiling tile before it hit the floor and shattered.

According to the Smithsonian Institution it was the first known meteorite to hit Virginia since 1924. Linda Welzenback, meteorite curator to the Smithsonian reported that it weighed slightly more than two thirds of a pound and identified it as stony "ordinary chondrite."

　

"It's 'ordinary' because 85 to 90 percent of everything that falls is this type," she said. "It has a light gray interior with little, tiny iron, nickel metal particles," all covered by a black fusion crust that melted as the rock entered the atmosphere.

It's arrival on Monday evening was witnessed by hundreds of people from New Jersey to southwestern Virginia being described as a brilliant fireball that broke into pieces as it fell.

"Ken," in Baldwin, wrote: "It appeared to break up slightly as it fell and almost seemed to sparkle like a firework would. It was an awesome sight between the orange/pink color of the horizon, the navy blue of the sky and the moon. The trail stayed in the sky for a number of minutes and seemed to have a slight crook or bend to it."

It has been estimated that the space rock was traveling at a speed of close to 220 mph when it struck the building's roof raining debris into the office. No one was injured.