Not impossible, but it’s very unlikely.......

What we know about the Northern California meteorite and house fire

Amanda Bartlett

Partial walls are all that remain of a rural home on a cattle ranch in Northern California that was destroyed in a fire Friday evening, not long after witnesses say they saw a bright object falling from the sky nearby. 

The blaze was reported at 7:25 p.m. near the Mooney Flat area in Nevada County, Clayton Thomas, a captain of the Penn Valley Fire Protection District, told SFGATE Monday. The owner of the home, Dustin Procita, was inside at the time the fire broke out and believes it was caused by a meteorite landing on his roof. 

"I heard a big bang," he told KCRA. "I started to smell smoke. I went onto my porch and it was completely engulfed in flames."

Procita was able to narrowly escape with one of his dogs, but lost another dog and his pet rabbits to the fire. Thomas said the blaze was contained by 8:55 p.m., and no people were injured or killed. What he doesn’t know is how the fire broke out. 

Over a hundred other sightings of the fireball observed near the home were reported to the American Meteor Society from as far south as Gustine, California to as far north as Grants Pass, Oregon. Elinor Gates, a staff astronomer at Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton, said one of her colleagues was at his home near Pleasant Valley when he happened to catch a glimpse of it, describing it as “the brightest fireball he’d ever seen.” While the fireball was observed on the same night as the Taurids meteor shower, NASA said on Facebook that it was not part of that event. 

Gates and other experts think it’s unlikely that a meteorite would have caused the fire resulting in the destruction of the home.

“What I can say is that it’s an amazing coincidence, time-wise,” Gates told SFGATE. 

She explained that meteors are extraordinarily cold when they come from space (for perspective, the baseline temperature is negative 455 degrees Fahrenheit.) Though they can become heated up by friction in the Earth’s atmosphere, they generally cool off by the time they hit the ground.

“Since the trip through the Earth’s atmosphere lasts only a few seconds, there is no time for the meteor as a whole to heat up, just the very outer layer,” known as the fusion crust, Gates said. “One can assume that the cold interior of the meteorite will act as a heat sink and very quickly cool off the hot surface, as well as the transfer of heat to the air around it.”

While it’s still possible that the meteorite could have crashed into Procita’s home, the heat of the rock itself wouldn’t have caused the fire, Gates said. 

“It would have to be because it hit something flammable, like a propane canister or something that might cause a spark,” she continued. “I won't say it’s impossible, but it’s very unlikely.” 

Karl Antier, a webmaster for the International Meteor Organization, added that the trajectory of the meteorite deduced from witness reports means it would have landed much farther north than Procita’s home near Englebright Lake. 

“Even if a meteorite fell into this man’s house, it would not have caused a fire, as it is just a piece of rock that fell from the sky, no more,” Antier told SFGATE in an email. “Contrary to what is usually thought, a falling meteorite is not hot, but very cold, and it won’t cause a fire itself if it falls on an object. The only reason it could do so is if it fell on something, which, damaged, could trigger a fire.”

Thomas said that a fire of this nature would be considered “exceedingly rare” if a meteorite was, in fact, the cause, but that other factors still need to be ruled out, such as electric problems, issues with gas service or smoking materials found in the building. 

He told SFGATE that he saw a video of the fireball recorded by an individual while they drove along Highway 20 on Friday night. “When they tried to figure out where it landed, they pulled up to the building that was on fire,” he said.

The cause of the fire is still under investigation and determining it could take several weeks, given the destruction of the building. Thomas said officials did not find any objects consistent with a meteorite at the scene. He plans on reaching out to NASA and the U.S. Air Force, which has a base about 10 miles away from where the fire occurred, in hopes of collecting more information.

“It’s a complex situation when you track in the potential for an extraterrestrial rock,” he said. “We just want to make sure that we cover all of our bases.”