A 7-ton meteor that sped across the Cleveland sky at 45,000 miles per hour on Tuesday broke apart in a thunderous boom that startled residents who feared an explosion.

NASA has confirmed the loud, booming sound heard near Cleveland on Tuesday morning was caused by an asteroid — which was approximately six feet in diameter and weighed roughly seven tons. According to the National Weather Service,

The Betsa family joined dozens at River Styx Park hunting for meteorites after NASA identified the area as the likely landing zone for fragments from Tuesday's fireball over Northeast Ohio.

After a 7-ton meteor flew across Ohio on Tuesday, some might be wondering just how big is that? Here are few things to help compare the size.

According to the National Weather Service, the loud sonic boom was caused by the meteor. A NASA spokesperson spoke with reporter Clay LePard, confirming the meteor was spotted near Medina. "I woke up this morning, and the sky fell, so I feel like Chicken Little right now," Bill Cooke, NASA's lead for the Meteoroid Environment Office, said.

A fiery streak across the sky and a loud boom greeted many residents of northeast Ohio on the morning of March 17. The rare celestial spectacle, which took place a little before 9 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, was caused by a six-foot-wide, seven-ton space rock that was traveling at roughly 40,000 miles per hour, according to NASA.

A meteor caused a loud boom heard across the Ohio Valley on March 17, but a meteor strike in the mid-Atlantic seems unlikely.

A meteor falling from the sky was responsible for a loud boom heard on March 17 heard throughout multiple states in the eastern part of the United States, reports the National Weather Service. "It shook my whole house,