The low flying thunderous Richardton, North Dakota meteorite of 1918

bobfoundit

Greenie
Feb 27, 2017
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12
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Primary Interest:
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Mr. Leo Kern , Section 18 , Township 136, Range 92 , saw the
fall. He was walking home about 10 o'clock at night, when
suddenly there was a bright light. At first it was like a bright
shooting star ; then it became a streak of fire until it burst like a
Roman candle. It appeared to be coming from the southeast,
falling at an angle of about 15° to the horizontal. It made a
“ rattling sound like an airship ,” and when it burst the earth
all about him trembled, and the house shook with the violence of
the explosion. He prudently took shelter behind a telegraph pole,
as the meteorite appeared to be coming directly toward him .
After the explosion he heard pieces flying through the air like
whistling bullets, and pieces rattled against the roof of his barn,
where he found some later.

After the meteorite had burst there
appeared to be a trail of " smoke or steam ” in the line of flight.
Several specimens were found by his daughters, Misses Emma and
Irene Kern, and contributed by them to the collection of the
University of Minnesota.

Mrs. Nell F. Rodenbour, postmistress at Lemmon, South
Dakota, writing February 25 , 1919, describes the fall as follows:
I saw this meteorite myself and can only describe it thus: At about 11
o'clock at night we heard a dull roar like thunder, and we all ran out of the
house to see, and there appeared a bright flash of light across the whole sky.
It fell to the northwest , more north , and left a tail of light which remained
for fully fifteen minutes.
Lemmon is about 45 miles south and 8 miles east of the place
where most of the meteorite fell .

Mr. N. R. St. Marie, of Hettinger, North Dakota, wrote on
February 27 as follows:
The writer was lucky enough to get an almost perfect view of the meteo
rite. I was seated in an auto sky -gazing, when it attracted my attention
as a shooting star. In a moment I saw that it was out of ordinary. Starting
from very high it fell rapidly earthward, a little to the east of north, about
10 or 15 degrees, I judged. As it came down it illuminated the landscape
to almost the brilliancy of sunlight, but the light was first of a green and later
of a yellow hue. A faint whistling was discernable to part of our party ;
others, however, said they didn't notice any sound.
 

Red-Coat

Gold Member
Dec 23, 2019
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Surrey, UK
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Interesting account. Are you posting this because you think you’ve found a specimen from this fall?

Although Mrs Rodenbour and Mr St Marie were writing in February 1919, the meteorite fall actually happened on 30th June 1918 at 9:48pm (erroneously reported as 26th July 1918 in the preliminary report published in the journal “Science” in January 1919)

Pieces fell on both sides of the line between Stark and Hettinger Counties within a strip about 9 miles long (north to south) and 5 miles wide (east to west). Initially 71 documented pieces were recovered, totalling about 56 kg plus numerous undocumented pieces. In total, the recovered weight was ultimately in the region of 90 kg.

The largest documented piece was a five-sided wedge shape weighing 8.3 kg found by Lewis Loran. It was shaped a bit like an axe-head:

Richardton.jpg

"... the sharp edge being 20 cm long, and the blunt end 12 cm by 11.2cm. From back to edge the piece is 18 cm. long. Part of the crust has been broken from the mass, especially from the corners. In fact the corners of most large specimens are battered because the meteorite fell at a low angle to the surface of the earth, so that most of the pieces seem to have rolled or bounded after striking the ground. Few pieces penetrated the soil and none is known to have broken through the sod.”

Meteorites are named for the nearest town, conurbation or geographical/topological feature to the fall and so the approved name is “Richardton”, a town about 20 miles north of the centre of the strewnfield. The classification is “H5 Chondrite” (high-metal with small chondrules, sufficiently metamorphosed to blur the chondrule outlines).
 

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