How often do meteorites fall?
Meteorites land somewhere on Earth every day, but most drop into the sea or onto empty land and are never seen. Only a handful of falls each year are both witnessed and recovered.
Every day, space rocks big enough to survive the journey reach the ground somewhere on our planet. Estimates vary with the method used, but scientists think that thousands of meteorites heavier than a few grams land each year, and some calculations put the figure in the tens of thousands. The catch is geography: about 71 per cent of Earth's surface is ocean, and much of the land is forest, mountain, desert or ice where nobody is watching.
That is why a witnessed fall, where people see the fireball and the rock is later picked up, is a special event. For most of history only a few falls a year were recovered worldwide, and the total number of officially recognised witnessed falls, gathered over several centuries, is still only somewhere above a thousand. Most meteorites in collections are finds instead: rocks picked up years or even thousands of years after they landed, usually in deserts or Antarctica.
The chance of a fall in any one small area is tiny. Britain has recorded only a couple of dozen witnessed falls in about 400 years, the most recent being Winchcombe in Gloucestershire in 2021. Yet the numbers are rising. Networks of automatic sky cameras, dashboard and doorbell cameras, weather radar that can pick up falling stones, and quick volunteer search teams mean more falls are tracked and recovered today than ever before.
So if you have never seen one land, you are in good company. Watch the night sky often enough, though, and you will probably catch a bright fireball, and very occasionally one of those leaves rocks on the ground.