Peshtigo Fire - Comet Theory

Comet Theory

One speculation, first suggested in 1883, is that the occurrence of the Peshtigo and Chicago fires on the same day was not just a coincidence, but that both fires (and other major, simultaneous fires in Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin) were caused by the impact of fragments from Comet Biela. This theory was revived in a 1985 book and investigated in a 2004 paper to the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

However, scientists with expertise in the area dispute that meteorites can ignite a fire; meteorites are cold to the touch when they reach the Earth's surface, and there are no credible reports of any fire anywhere having been started by a meteorite. Additionally, various aspects of the behaviors of the Chicago and Peshtigo fires attributed to extraterrestrial intervention have more mundane explanations. In any event, no external source of ignition was needed; numerous small fires were already burning in the area after a tinder-dry summer, generating so much smoke that the Green Island Light was kept lit 24 hours a day for weeks before the main fire. All that was needed to generate the firestorm, as well as other fires in the Midwest, were the winds from the front that moved in that evening.