Skyquake! Mystery Sound Jolts South Africans Awake – Asteroid, Meteor or Plain Mystery

In the early hours of Monday morning, Herman Labuschagne – who lives near Oudtshoorn in South Africa’s Klein Karoo – could not fall asleep. He lay in bed reading, and then – at around 00h45 – he went to pick some herbs in the garden (as one does!).

“I noticed that there was no sign of rain – which I was worried about, on account of having some washing still on the line,” he says. And then, at around 01h00, there was a sudden sound of a ‘skyquake’! People who had successfully fallen asleep, in towns around the Western Cape, were jolted awake. Most thought it was thunder. It was apparently an asteroid (or rather a meteor) or maybe just a mystery skyquake! Herman explains…

“I heard what sounded like a freight train passing overhead. It sounded vaguely like thunder, yet oddly different. I considered that it might be an explosion at the infantry base nearby, but the sound was too sustained to be a military explosion. And it clearly wasn’t an aircraft either. I knew lightning was unlikely because the sky had seemed clear moments before.”

Five minutes later, someone on a Mossel Bay FB group asked if anyone else had heard or seen the ‘asteroid’. Soon reports came in from Riversdale to Plettenberg Bay, several from Oudtshoorn, De Rust and Calitzdorp. A couple of people even claimed to have heard it in Kimberley (Northern Cape) and Pretoria (Gauteng).

One person in George, on the Garden Route, reported that he saw a bright streak at a 70 degree angle, followed by a large mid-air explosion.

“From that, my assumption is that it must have been an asteroid after all,” Herman told SAPeople. “As far as I know this is the time of the annual Perseid meteor shower, so possibly not altogether strange as an occurrence, although atmospheric intrusions of this magnitude must be very rare.”

Perseid meteor?

According to EarthSky.org, 2021 is an excellent year for the Perseid meteor shower, and they are currently streaking across the sky just after midnight in the Southern Hemisphere (earlier in the North). Most are expected on 11, 12 and 13 August.

EarthSky does mention an ‘earthgrazer’, saying: “If fortune smiles upon you, the evening hours might offer you an earthgrazer, a looooong, slow, colorful meteor traveling horizontally across the evening sky. Earthgrazer meteors are rare but memorable.” Could it have been that?

There’s also the Delta Aquariid meteor shower happening right now, according to EarthSky, with the most numerous occurring south of the Equator, after midnight.

It’s not unheard of for meteors to explode in the skies above SA. In January 2019, a meteor exploded over Hermanus in the Western Cape. Witnesses described it as sounding like an earthquake, and said the explosion even shook some homes.

Facebook page Severe Weather and Information Centre SA’s (SWAICSA’s) Angelo Hoorn reported on Monday:

“⚠️SKYQUAKE⚠️ We have received reports of a loud noise coming from the sky at around 01:00 this morning. Those reporting it said it was definitely not an airplane and it sounded like thunder (but the nearest thunderstorm at that time was 1700km away from SA). One of the possible explanations for this was a Skyquake.”

What is a Skyquake?

Swaicsa says: “A Skyquake is a phenomenon where a loud booming sound is reported to originate from the sky. The sound may cause noticeable vibration in a building or across a particular area. Those who experience skyquakes typically do not have a clear explanation for what caused them and they are perceived as ‘mysterious’.”

What is the difference between an Asteroid and a Meteorite?

According to Phys.org, “asteroids are always found in space. Once it enters an atmosphere, it becomes a meteor, and then a meteorite after it hits the ground. Each are made of the same basic materials – minerals and rock – and each originated in space. The main difference is where they are when they are being observed.”

South Africa’s famous meteorite impact sites

According to SA Tourism, South Africa is home to at least four major meteorite impact sites:

• Vredefort Crater near Parys in the Free State, where a meteorite hit 2-billion years ago… leaving a 300km wide crater! Apparently “the dust that the impact threw up would have blanketed the planet for millennia, causing dramatic global cooling”. Some of the ridges it created form the Witwatersrand. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and one of the world’s largest meteorite impact craters.
• Morokweng Crater in the Kalahari Desert is the world’s 8th largest meteorite impact crater, and was formed 145 million years ago.
• Tswaing Crater about 40km north of Pretoria. This is the most visible of SA’s meteorite sites.
• Kalkkop Crater near Graaff-Reinet in the Karoo, in the Eastern Cape… where a meteorite hit Earth about 250,000 years ago