Last Thursday was an exciting evening in the Bay Area. There was a small earthquake near Berkeley that shook everyone up and lit the 911 switchboards from Marin to Santa Clara. And here in San Mateo County, ten minutes before the quake, County fire was dispatched up to Highway 92 west of Highway 280 in response to a report from “a single RP reporting a white light seen dropping out of the sky that he believes was a plane or a shooting star…” somewhere near 92 past 280. A few minutes later, the call is cancelled when County Dispatch receives word from San Francisco International that no plane was involved.
Now the likelihood is vanishingly small, but who knows, perhaps a meteorite landed in our little county? More likely, a sincere observer observed a small fireball that fell hundreds of miles out to sea or disintegrated high in the atmosphere. Assuming that there was an actual apparition, then there must have been other observers, but in all the excitement from the quake 10 minutes later, they may have never bothered to call in. Which is a pity as given one or two more reports it might have been possible to triangulate on the event and determine whether against all odds, a visitor actually dropped into the county. Personally, unlikely as it may be, I will indulge in the fantasy that somewhere to the west a bit of the cosmos landed among the redwoods and now is sitting atop a bit of scorched pine duff being sniffed by a puzzled deer or carried off to their nest by an industrious woodrat.
