CO-ROTATING INTERACTION REGION: Minor G1-class geomagnetic storms are possible on April 17th when a co-rotating interaction region (CIR) is expected to hit Earth. CIRs are transition zones between fast and slow-moving streams of solar wind. They contain shock waves and enhanced magnetic field that often spark high-latitude auroras. Free: Spaceweather.com Newsletter
THE DEEPENING MYSTERY OF THE MARCH FIREBALLS: If you love a good mystery, look no further than the night sky in March 2026. There were no major meteor showers scheduled for March, yet suddenly fireballs started appearing everywhere.
"During the month of March, reports of very bright fireballs to the American Meteor Society (AMS) suddenly doubled," says Mike Hankey, who manages the AMS's fireball reporting system. "Many of them were visible in broad daylight and created loud sonic booms."
Above: The fireball over Koblenz, Germany, that started the "March Madness." [movie]
A daytime fireball over Western Europe on March 8th drew more than 3,200 witness reports. Nine days later, a 7-ton asteroid exploded over Ohio with the force of 250 tons of TNT. On March 21st, a fireball broke apart above Houston, sending a fragment through the roof of a house. And those were just the headliners.
Hankey has been running the fireball reporting system for nearly 15 years (indeed, he wrote much of the software himself), so he knew something unusual was happening. When the reports kept piling up, he dove into the data -- and what he found is genuinely puzzling.
"The total number of fireballs people saw was not dramatically unusual," Hankey explains. "But the fraction of big fireballs really surged."
At the 50-report threshold (events bright and loud enough to be noticed across multiple states) Q1 2026 produced 40 events, double the historical average. At 100+ reports, the count also doubled. More than 82% of these large events produced sonic booms, indicating objects penetrating deep into the atmosphere.
Hankey wondered if AI might have something to do with it. "People who see fireballs can now talk to their phone and ask AI how to report it," he says. "We naturally wondered if this might be amplifying the number of reports." However, the increase turned on quickly at the start of March, and turned off just as quickly at the start of April--an ON/OFF pattern inconsistent with simple AI amplification.
Digging deeper, Hankey looked at where the fireballs came from. He found not one, but two sources. One cluster of fireballs came from opposite the sun -- the "Anthelion" source. Another came from high declinations -- basically falling upon us from above the plane of the planets. These two directions could not be more different, yet they contributed about equally to the surge.
Predictably, some people wondered if this might have anything to do with interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS. "No," says Hankey. "The meteorites dropped by these fireballs were eucrites and diogenites linked to the asteroid Vesta -- not interstellar material."
As we write this in April, the barrage has ended as mysteriously as it began. One thing is certain: When March 2027 rolls around, many eyes will be watching the sky to see if it happens again.
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PREMIUM ITEM--THE WROUGHT IRON SPACE ROSE: Mother's Day is coming soon. Give mom a premium gift that never wilts or dies: The Wrought Iron Space Rose. On Feb. 1, 2026, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched the metal bloom to the stratosphere onboard a cosmic ray research balloon:
You can have it for $197.95. This is a premium item. The rose was forged by hand from iron, the element created in supernova explosions--so this rose is genuine "star stuff." Buy this rose and you will also receive a greeting card showing the bloom in flight and telling the story of its journey to the stratosphere and back again.
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UNNATURAL NOCTILUCENT CLOUDS: The correct season for noctilucent clouds (NLCs) is summer, when sunwarmed plumes of water vapor rise to the edge of space and crystallize around disintegrated meteoroids. April is not the correct time. Yet just before sunrise on April 14th, Christopher Nolker looked up from Cocoa Beach, Florida, and saw them anyway:
"The clouds really were that bright," says Nolker. "I saw them at about 6:20 a.m."
Why April? Because these NLCs are not natural. They were made by SpaceX.
About an hour before Nolker stepped into his front yard, a Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral carrying 29 Starlink satellites. As the engines climbed through the atmosphere, they emitted a spray of watery exhaust that mixed with meteor dust to produce the NLCs.
This is not new. Space shuttle launches in the 1990s produced some of the first widely-noticed "rocket NLCs." The phenomenon has intensified in recent years with the exponential increase in SpaceX launch rates. "These are a semi-regular occurrence here in Cocoa Beach due to the combination of clear skies and SpaceX launching so frequently," says Nolker.
Noctilucent clouds aren't just a summertime phenomenon anymore. Check the SpaceX launch schedule, and be alert for NLCs.
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