It wasn’t a meteorite in Beltrami County, so what was it?

MOORHEAD, Minn., (KVRR) – On a quiet evening in Bemidji, people were settling in for the night. But that all changed with a bright flash and an explosion that rocked the county.

Beltrami County says the noise was heard from close to 50 miles away. Chris Muller, the PIO for the county, explained what he heard on Monday.

“It was very violent,” said Muller. “It actually shook the windows and rattled the dishes in the kitchen. So it was a very loud boom. Certainly after that, we started getting additional reports that people had observed a very, bright flash, a white, blueish flash across the sky that was followed shortly by that loud boom.”

While officials are still trying to confirm details of what happens in the videos posted online, in a second video you can see a light or something dart across the night sky and disappear. Some speculated online that it was a meteorite, but that can’t be the case according to the scientific community.

“Most meteors when they explode, 15 to 20 miles up,” said Dr. Juan Cabanela with Minnesota State University Moorhead. “The big one that hit Chelyabinsk, Russia, a few years ago was more than 20 miles up when it detonated. And the sound should have taken half a minute to a minute to get down from that altitude. So the fact that it happened so quick, told me that whatever exploded it was really close. And meteors don’t generally get that far down.”

Muller says he’s been in contact with numerous agencies since the explosion. This includes NASA, as they are trying to get to the bottom of this so far, unexplained event.

Some on social media say it was possibly a blown transformer. That was debunked by experts, who say there would have been power outages if that was the case.

“We did have police officers go check the substations as well looking for any blown transformers, said Muller. “The other thing is if you have a blown transformer or substation issue, you would expect power outages. We didn’t have a single power outage last night.”

While there are still debates on what happened in Beltrami County, Dr. Cabanela says he doesn’t want to speculate on what it is until he has more data to look at.

“I am flabbergasted at what this could be. I have a hard time imagining that anyone is flying supersonic aircraft over northern Minnesota. But I have no clue.” said Dr. Cabanela.

The explosion was reported to happen around 6:40 p.m. on Monday.