A one-ton fiery meteorite streaked across the skies over Georgia at 30,000 mph on Thursday before exploding in midair, prompting hundreds of reports in multiple states.

The American Meteor Society says it received more than 200 reports of a “fireball” hurtling through the sky in the Peach State as well as the states of Alabama, Florida, Tennessee, and the Carolinas. 

The space rock was first spotted at an altitude of nearly 50 miles above the town of Oxford, Georgia, at a speed of 30,000 mph, Bill Cooke, a lead researcher at NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office, said in a statement to CBS News.

The fireball, or bright meteorite — which was 3 feet in diameter and weighed more than a ton — eventually exploded in midair about 30 miles above West Forest, Georgia, and unleashed the equivalent of 20 tons of TNT explosives.

“The resulting pressure wave propagated to the ground, creating booms heard by many in that area,” Mr. Cooke said.

A fireball is a meteor brighter than magnitude 4, similar to Venus in the sky. A bolide is a type of fireball that ends with an explosion of light and visible fragments.

“This was the middle of the day, and it just came out of nowhere,” an eyewitness report to the American Meteor Society from Perry, Georgia, read.

Robert Lunsford of the American Meteor Society told CBS News that the fireball is likely part of the Beta Taurid meteor shower, which peaks around June 25 and is active between late June and early July.

“I would estimate that we receive reports of one daylight event per month from all over the world,” he said. “I would say one out [of] every 700 fireball events involves a fireball seen during daylight hours.”

“So these events are rare, and most people go a lifetime without seeing one.”

The last time a fireball was seen above America was in February 2024, when it lit up evening skies across the eastern seaboard.