A few nights ago I was driving home at almost Midnight in my home town Gainesville, Florida. I had just left a gas station and was looking forward to a few hours of Overwatch and Netflix before bed when I saw the most amazing natural phenomenon in my life.
Many on social media are calling it the Green Meteor, Florida Meteor, and March Meteor.
It was what Scientists call a Fireball Meteor. But in the moment, in my shocked state it was just a super bright Blue Green "Something" that shot out of space directly at the ground ahead of me.
My initial unedited response was to take my foot off the Gas, and yell "What the F*** was that?!?" which I followed with some other slightly embarrassing phrases that didn't make the video like "THAT WAS F***ing AMAZING!" and "HOLY S***."
I immediately remembered the Chelyabinsk Incident where a Meteor Air Burst blew out windows for miles, hospitalized 112 people and injured many more.
But after a few moments passed with no boom, my shock and anxiety turned into exhilaration and excitement. At which point I said out loud to my self "I'm definitely checking the dash cam footage!"
When I did, this is what I saw:
Believe me when I say the video doesn't do it justice. It was brighter, and it was bigger to the human eye as opposed to my Dash Camera.
It started above the frame about a second before it appears in the video and got larger as it fell. Also, there was a very green look to it that isn't well represented in the video.
When I got home, I couldn't wait to post it on YouTube and Twitter so other people could see it.
I knew it wasn't common to catch such big meteors on camera, but I had no idea how much attention it would get, or even more so, how FAST it would get attention across the world.
Within minutes I was getting hundreds of likes and retweets. Then the media requests started. First local news. Then news agencies around the world. One of the first being from Japan!
Everyone wanted permission to use the footage. Being that I had never had a viral YouTube clip before, I had ZERO idea how to respond. So I decided to just let everyone use it with credit to me, and only for news purposes.
Should some Documentary or Film want to use it, I will have to figure out some fee to charge.
At one point in the night, just before bed, I was getting so many notifications on Twitter and YouTube that I couldn't keep up. I would read 20 and then update and there would be 40 more.
So I gave up and started again in the morning. The notifications still coming fast, but manageable, I was able to respond to and see most of them.
Fast forward to today and I was out doing news interviews for the local ABC and CBS News. Looking a bit awkward and nervous, I tried to relate the experience, but nothing I said would ever do it justice.
If you want to see my interviews here are the links:
https://mycbs4.com/news/local/gainesville-mans-dash-cam-catches-bright-green-meteor
What's next in this crazy Viral Saga? I don't know. The video is getting an insane amount of views on YouTube and I have long wanted to get back into content creation but not just limited to EVE Online.
I love EVE Online, and still think it's the best game I've ever played, but after 10+ years of playing almost every day my fire is gone. That's not to say I won't return, just that I can't promise that I will.
So maybe I will rename the Channel to my real name and just post the things I like to it. Things like Cooking, Weight Lifting, DIY Projects, etc.
Who knows, but for all of you who have been with me for years, I appreciate you and hope you come along for the ride.
One more thing, I am going to do a bigger video with more footage and info about the Meteor in a few days. I have more footage before and after the Meteor, as well as some establishing footage during the day time to show the scene.
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