Tunguska (1908) and its relevance for comet/asteroid impact statistics

Abstract

Depending on distance from the event - at (101° 53′ 40″ E, 60° 53′ 09″ N) - the Siberian catastrophe of 30 June 1908 was reported as cannon shots (barisal guns, brontides: Gold and Soter 1979) and/or storms followed by columns of fire, also described as lightning and thunderclaps, after which an area of more than 2000 square kilometers, diameter some 50 km, had its trees debranched, felled, or their tops chopped off, varying with their distance from the center and/or height above the valleys, even with islands of tree survival near the center, and in the valleys. A few tents (tepees), barns (storage huts), and cattle (reindeer) were damaged, hurled aloft, and/or incinerated. The haunting took some ten minutes, variously reported between 2 min and an hour; one man even washed in the bath house to meet the death clean. © 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.