The Novato meteorite is an ordinary chondrite which entered the Earth's atmosphere and broke up over Northern California at 19:44 Pacific Time on 17 October 2012.

The falling bolide created a bright fireball and sonic booms and fragmented into smaller pieces as the intense friction of passing through the atmosphere heated it and absorbed its kinetic energy.

[3] The first fragment of the meteorite (N01) was recovered by Lisa Webber on 20 October after reading a story in the San Francisco Chronicle that described the NASA/CAMS meteor trajectory predicting a fall area in the North Bay.

[4] Lisa recalled hearing a sound on her roof the night of the meteor and went outside and located a 62 gram stone.

[1][6] The largest fragment recovered as of 5 November 2012 is N04 at 96 grams found by Robert Verish on 27 October.