US cheese imports

As US cheese imports have grown, fireball meteor sightings have increased, a correlation of 0.984 that connects European dairy to atmospheric pyrotechnics with the astronomical confidence of a chart that believes Gruyère is falling from the sky. The cheese is imported, the meteor burns, and both numbers climb because more people are reporting things and buying things simultaneously. The Brie arrives by container ship. The fireball arrives at Mach 40. The chart treats both deliveries equally.

Cheese imports grew from about 250,000 to over 430,000 metric tons between 2005 and 2022. Fireball sightings grew from about 500 to over 5,000 per year as the American Meteor Society's online tools made reporting easy. Both are upward curves: cheese because of premiumization, fireballs because of improved reporting infrastructure. The fireballs were always there; we just got better at counting them. The cheese was always imported; we just wanted more of it.

Eighteen years of cheese imports and fireballs is a correlation between two forms of increased counting: more cheese is imported because demand grew, more fireballs are reported because the reporting system improved. The cheese is weighed at customs, the fireball is logged on an app, and neither measurement system is aware of the other. The rind is inspected. The trajectory is tracked. The correlation glows briefly and fades.