What to know about 'fireball season' as the number of visible meteors peaks for the year
There has been an influx of reported shooting stars in recent months, NASA says.
People across the United States have been treated to a visual feast of shooting stars streaking through the sky in recent months, as the number of visible meteors has increased amid peak "fireball season."
Meteors have recently been seen throughout the U.S. -- from Texas, Ohio, California and Michigan, according to NASA.
Meteors are common and can happen at any given time. But peak "fireball season" typically runs from February through April, when the rate of bright meteors can increase by 10% to 30%, according to NASA.
The exact reason for the uptick in meteor sightings during that time is unclear, but some astronomers believe the Earth passes through more large debris at that time of year.
The American Meteor Society has also been fielding a growing number of inquiries during this season. The "February fireballs" are a "well-documented" phenomenon in which an increase of bright sporadic meteors occurs, it said.
Every February, there is typically a bump in fireballs because that part of the sky sits higher at night, which can make meteors easier to spot.
This year is different because the surge didn't peak in February. The spike spilled into March and was the most significant in the last five years, according to an AMS report.
Mike Hankey, the operations manager of the AMS, confirmed that not only are there more reports coming in, but we are seeing genuinely larger meteors entering our atmosphere.
"When a meteorite goes through a home's roof, that isn't hype," Hankey told ABC News. "That's physically real.”
Hankey dug into the organization's database, going back to 2011. What he found was that while the total number of fireballs is only slightly higher than in previous years, sightings of really big ones are happening more often.
"We see more reports across the bigger events or what we consider to be bigger events," Hankey explained.
There has been a significant surge of large fireball events during the first quarter of 2026, according to the AMS.
There were about 2,046 individual reported meteor events; 38 events that involved 50 or more reports and 14 events that involved 100 or more reports, according to the AMS.
Most of the elevated activity so far in 2026 took place in March 2026, according to Hankey. In his report, he referred to the month's sightings as an "unprecedented concentration of major fireballs.”
"It's been really very flat and consistent for over five years," Hankey said. "Then all of a sudden, we get this rush of reports this month, in March -- didn't start in February or really January, even.”
Shooting stars occur when a meteoroid -- or space rock -- enters Earth's atmosphere and "zips" through the atmosphere, according to NASA. When many meteoroids encounter the atmosphere at once, it's considered a meteor shower.
Many of these fireballs are coming from known sources in space, Hankey said. One of those sources is called the "Anthelion" sporadic stream, which is basically a region of leftover space debris that Earth regularly passes through.
One potential reason the number of reports of meteors is increasing is likely more cameras, from smartphones to doorbell and vehicle dashboard cameras, NASA said.
On March 21, a 1-ton meteor streaked across the night sky before breaking up into a fireball that caused a loud boom as it entered Earth's atmosphere. Another meteor was seen on March 17 over Ohio and Pennsylvania. That meteor also produced a loud "boom" and a fireball in the sky, the National Weather Service office in Pittsburgh said.
Meteors can make a "boom" when they travel through Earth's atmosphere at hypersonic speeds -- or speeds that exceed the speed of sound, according to NASA. The loud, explosive sound is often called a "sonic boom."
Sonic booms also confirm larger objects are moving through the atmosphere, Hankey said.
"When 100 people report it has a sonic boom, dozens of people report their windows rattling or shaking, it's reported across several states or 600 miles," Hankey said. "That isn't made up.”
During the first three months of 2026, 30 out of 38 events with 50 or more reports involved a sonic boom, the AMS said.
The event with the most reports occurred on March 8, in which a slow, long-duration fireball over France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands garnered 3,229 reports, according to the AMS.
Recovered specimens of that meteorite were identified as Diogenites, a rare type.
That event was followed by a wave of large meteors entering Earth's atmosphere across Europe and the U.S. Some of those meteors produced meteorites when they hit the ground. Some of the fragments were recovered in Ohio and Texas.
It is unclear when the elevated meteor activity will stop, Hankey said.
"This is a mystery to me, too," he said.
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