Doppler radar is actually pretty useful for seeing falling meteorite debris as easily as it can see rain or hail. Looks like there are rocks on the ground.
https://ares.jsc.nasa.gov/meteorite-falls/
(The last good radar hit for a fall in the US was in Western North Carolina in extremely challenging land for searching. In the exact area that a month later was massively flooded by Helene. Nobody’s ever seeing any of that one.)
An update for the obvious huge interest in this thread, the first piece has been found (by a FB friend of mine).
So the two of you are Larry and Darryl?
Too bad there wasn’t snow on the ground before the meteorite fall. It would have made it easier to find the pieces.
At first I wondered why you thought that, but then realized you meant the black showing up against the white. So light snow would be helpful. Heavier snow, not so much (it would sink).
Another of my FB friends has posted their haul. 8 days of walking staring at the ground resulted in one 6.3 gram fragment.
So the largest individual piece found for this fall turned out to be 47 kilograms. Here is Facebook video of it as it is currently on display at the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show. (Also on display and in the video, a group of Martians recently found in Arizona.)
I didn’t know people did this (walk around looking for a particular recent meteorite, or parts of it). It’s the sort of thing I should know. Thanks to the OP for this thread – very cool!
There are a number of people who do it professionally. Jet around the country or the world to search for new falls whenever and wherever they happen. The guy in the video (Robert Ward, not Wad) is one of the top hunters. It can be an Indiana Jones-like lifestyle. For instance, in 2010, Ward, along with Mike Farmer, ended up spending three months in a prison in Oman. (Farmer is a lot more outspoken and probably more globetrottery than Ward.)
Both are walking in the footsteps of another larger than life guy named Robert Haag
(He once had an article about him in National Geographic, but it isn’t available online.)
Haag also had a legendary encounter with authorities:
Here’s a pretty extensive report about searching for the famous Chelyabinsk fall:
Wow. I’ll absorb these slowly.
Funny story. After a meteorite fall in Costa Rica
Mike Farmer liked the country so much that he bought some land and started building a home there. He posts lots of wildlife photos and video from there on Facebook and one post about a beetle went viral. And keeps showing up over and over two years after it happened. So after all the world-traveling adventures literally worthy of a movie or two, his claim to fame is a shiny bug.
Which makes it an example of the Bacon Cat Law of Internet Popularity.
Bacon Cat Law – ha! And, that beetle is amazing.
Here’s a brand new, long article
The article describes the driveway shattered piece of Winchcombe but doesn’t show the famous photo:
(I was reminded of that by the recent fall in Canada that was caught on video as it powdered itself on a walkway.)
An article about the latest hunt, in Georgia.
No photos, though. Here’s one
This one fell less than a hundred miles from me, the fireball would have been visible from my house, if I was standing outside at the time and there were no trees in the way. Many other people did see it, though.
(This will not be the latest search much longer, a couple of hours ago there was a big meteor in Scotland a couple of hours ago that almost certainly put rocks on the ground.)
Very cool.
I’m not a meteor-ist (what is the word? “Meteorologist” is already claimed), but I’m guessing that in a situation like that, the best data would come from preserving the impact site as best as possible, and letting the meteor-ist come in to collect it, because there’s probably useful information in precisely which grains of powder are where, that the typical layman, or even educated scientist in a different field, wouldn’t know to collect.
Meteoriticist.
Cool. But bolidist would be even cooler. Fireballer would be great too. So many missed chances!
Reminds me that I wanted to start micrometeorite hunting.
Spacerocktoligist?