Skywatchers in Oneonta, New York caught a fireball streaking across the night sky last Sunday, and the bright flash left behind a strange cloud that lingered in its wake. More than 200 miles away in Carlton, New York, another fireball was caught on camera the same night, though it has not been established that the two sightings were connected.
Meteorologist Bill Kardas shared two videos of the Oneonta fireball on October 25, 2026, including one sent by a social media follower who recorded it from the ground, according to cnynews.com. Kardas said the cloud that appeared afterward was likely debris from the space rock burning up in Earth's atmosphere, the report said. The Oneonta footage was also covered by 97.7/97.3 The Wolf.
A Second Fireball Over Carlton
Kardas also shared footage of a fireball over Carlton, crediting a follower named Rick, according to the outlet's report. Carlton is more than 200 miles from Oneonta. The distance alone does not establish whether the two sightings were related, and no connection has been confirmed.
NASA defines a fireball as a meteor that reaches a visual magnitude of -3 or brighter when viewed at the observer's zenith; the objects that produce them can exceed one meter in size, according to NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. An exploding fireball is technically called a bolide, though the terms are often used interchangeably. NASA says such objects usually do not survive the trip through Earth's atmosphere intact, although fragments are sometimes recovered on the ground.
What the Fireball Record Can—and Can't—Show
The information cited here does not establish how many bright fireballs NASA's monitoring system recorded over New York in past years. NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies says its fireball data are not real-time and that not all fireballs are reported, so the database should not be treated as a complete count of sightings: NASA CNEOS.
Why October Skies Tend to Light Up
NASA identifies February through April as the peak fireball season, with an additional autumn fireball period running from September through November, according to the cnynews.com report. That autumn window overlaps with major meteor streams including the Southern and Northern Taurids, which NASA says contributes to the uptick in activity.
The South Taurid meteor stream is active from roughly September 10 through November 20 this year, while the North Taurids run from about October 20 through December 10, according to EarthSky. The South Taurids are predicted to peak on November 5, with the North Taurids peaking a week later on November 12, per EarthSky's forecast. When the two showers overlap, they can produce about 10 meteors per hour under ideal dark-sky conditions, though fireballs typically make up only about one percent of Taurid meteors in a given year, rising to as much as seven percent in exceptional years.
Other Reported Fireballs
A fireball streaked over South Jersey and the broader Mid-Atlantic early on September 9, 2026. Video from Franklinville in Gloucester County showed the object blazing through the sky at 2:38 a.m., according to SILive.com. A New York City live camera overlooking the East River also captured the fireball, and witnesses in Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland described seeing the brightly colored object on Reddit and other social platforms.
An earlier fireball, in November 2020, was reportedly seen around 7:22 p.m. on a Sunday across New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut. The American Meteor Society fielded more than 200 calls about it, according to Hudson Valley Country. The society's preliminary trajectory placed the visible flight traveling east to west and ending somewhere south of Poughkeepsie. The American Meteor Society has said fireball-magnitude meteors occur daily, but most go unnoticed because they happen over oceans or are masked by daylight, as reported by American Meteor Society.
