By Tim Binnall
In a puzzling story out of Minnesota, authorities are at a loss to explain a weird incident wherein the night sky was lit up by a flash that was followed by a boom after experts indicated that the event was not caused by a meteor. According to a local media report, the peculiar mystery began on Monday evening in the state's Beltrami County when multiple residents spotted an illumination streak across the sky and then heard a monstrous explosion shortly thereafter. Although it was initially believed that the event was merely a meteor entering the atmosphere, that theory has since been cast aside by officials who concede that they are now stumped by what occurred earlier this week.
In a press release updating the public on the curious case, Beltrami County Emergency Management explained that they obtained footage of the streaking object at the center of the mystery by way of a camera at the Bemidji Regional Airport. The video was subsequently turned over to "an astronomer and a scientist from NASA" who did a frame-by-frame analysis of the material and "determined the object is too horizontal to indicate it was a meteor" and noted that "additional data needed to be collected to further eliminate possible other interfering objects." The statement went on to observe that, based on calculations derived from the airport footage, "the source of the flash and boom were less than a mile away."
With what seemed to be the most obvious explanation for Monday's event being dismissed by the experts, the cause of the strange flash and subsequent boom remains a mystery to officials. "This has certainly been an interesting puzzle to try and solve," Christopher Muller of Beltrami County Emergency Management mused, "and we still don't know exactly what it was." Particularly perplexing to Muller is that "this was seen and heard across such a large area" with people as far as 50 miles away saying they witnessed the enigmatic flash and felt the boom that followed. To date, there have been no signs of any damage anywhere in Beltrami County which could be attributed to the odd incident which officials have pledged to continue investigating.