Fireball seen across the southeastern US was produced by asteroidal fragment: NASA
A sonic boom was also heard in the event.
Fireball sightings were reported in multiple states across the southeastern United States during the day on Thursday, which NASA determined was produced by an asteroidal fragment weighing over a ton and moving over 30,000 mph.
The American Meteor Society said it received 215 reports of fireball sightings Thursday over six states -- Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. The bright daylight fireball was reported at 12:25 p.m. ET, NASA said.
"The meteor was first seen at an altitude of 48 miles above the town of Oxford, Georgia, moving southwest at 30,000 miles per hour," Bill Cooke, lead for NASA’s Meteoroid Environments Office, said in a statement on Friday.
The fireball was produced by a three-foot asteroidal fragment that disintegrated 27 miles above West Forest, Georgia, unleashing energy equivalent to approximately 20 tons of TNT, according to Cooke.
"The resulting pressure wave propagated to the ground, creating booms heard by many in that area," he said, adding that multiple Doppler weather radars also detected "the signatures of meteorites falling to the ground."
In northern Georgia, there were "numerous reports" of an earthquake followed by a flash across the sky, according to the National Weather Service in Peachtree City. A citizen in Henry County reported a "rock" went through their ceiling around that time, the office said while sharing photos of the damage on social media.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) told ABC News it found multiple bright flashes of light during the day on Thursday via its lightning flash tracker.
One of the flashes was captured between 12:21 p.m. and 12:26 p.m. ET, south of Atlanta. Multiple videos from home security and dashcam footage in South Carolina, verified by ABC News, captured a fireball streaking across the sky around that time.
The NOAA's Satellite and Information Service shared a "quick flash" captured around the Virginia-North Carolina border on Thursday.
NOAA's lightning mapper can sometimes detect bright meteors -- or bolides -- when they pass through the atmosphere, the office said.
Following "many reports" of a fireball across the Southeast, the National Weather Service in Charleston, South Carolina, also said "satellite-based lightning detection shows a streak within cloud free sky" near the Virginia-North Carolina border Thursday.
ABC News' Kerem Inal and Gabrielle Vinick contributed to this report.
