Above is footage from the dramatic exploding meteor which streaked across the skies of Russia over the Urals on February 15 (Friday).

The billowing white trail has led some to conclude that the meteor was actually shot down by some sort of anti-aircraft or anti-missile system.

While all possibilities should of course be left open to examination based on the evidence, it is quite possible that the dramatic breakup of this meteor, as well as the white cloud trail, are consistent with a disintegrating meteor.

What would cause a meteor to come apart prior to hitting the ground?  If the meteor were a solid rock hurtling towards the earth, the mere fact of passing through the atmosphere would not be expected to cause it to explode.  Neither would it be expected to cause it to leave such a billowing trail of white cloud.

If you saw vapor of that color streaming out of the tailpipe of your car or truck, what would you immediately conclude?  White clouds like those seen in the video footage taken by those on the scene would, if coming out of your car, cause you to suspect that your engine was burning water.  Water can get into the engine cylinders on a car or truck engine through eroded rubber valve seals or through a faulty head gasket.  These problems can cause the engine to belch white smoke out the exhaust because water is being introduced into the internal combustion in the cylinders.

While conventional theories about meteors do not generally explain the amount of white smoke filmed by observers of Friday's meteor in Russia, the hydroplate theory of Dr. Walt Brown does.  On this page of the online book in which Dr. Brown presents his evidence for anyone to access free of charge, he explains that  according to the hydroplate theory, meteors (and meteoroids and meteorites) originally came from earth, launched by the tremendous forces that ejected water from under the earth and caused a catastrophic global flood, forces powerful enough to eject some material (both rocks and water) out of earth's orbit and into space.

Dr. Brown provides evidence that the rocks launched into space by the events surrounding a global flood on earth often formed large orbiting bodies composed of many smaller chunks of rock held together by frozen water acting as a weak glue.  He explains:
The fountains of the great deep launched rocks and water from Earth. Later, most of those rocks merged within their growing spheres of influence (and the help of gravity and water vapor) to become asteroids.  [. . .]  Water droplets in the fountains partially evaporated and quickly froze. Large rocks had large spheres of influence which grew as the rocks traveled away from Earth. Larger rocks became “seeds” around which other rocks and ice collected as spheres of influence expanded. Because of all the evaporated water vapor and the resulting aerobraking, even more mass concentrated around the “seeds.” [See page 294.]  Clumps of rocks became asteroids.  [see "Hydroplate Explanation," near the top of this online page]. 
Among the evidence that Dr. Brown offers in support of this theory is the spin rate of the objects orbiting the sun that are classified as asteroids -- most of the larger objects, with diameters greater than 200 meters, do not spin faster than ten times per day.  He explains that if they did, the weak ice bonds holding these clumps of rock together would be overcome, and the larger clumps of rock would break apart into smaller pieces:  
Clumps of rocks in space, held together only by their weak mutual gravity, will fly apart if they spin faster than ten times a day. Asteroids larger than 200 meters across never spin faster than ten times a day, so those bodies may be clusters of loose rocks. Asteroids smaller than 200 meters often spin hundreds of times a day. Therefore, they are probably single rocks,9 although it is possible that multiple rocks are held together by ice. 
One of the strongest arguments in favor of Dr. Brown's hydroplate theory is the fact that his theory enables him to make predictions.  He has published many predictions based upon his theory which have later been found to be correct. In the case of his theory that asteroids, meteoroids, and comets are formed from material that was originally ejected from earth itself, Dr. Brown has offered some predictions, including this one, which was later discovered to be correct:
Prediction 36. [. . .] Most asteroids are rock piles, often with ice acting as a weak “glue” inside. Large rocks that began the capture process are nearer the centers of asteroids. Comets, which contain much ice, have rocks in their cores.
Four years after this prediction was published in 2001 (In the Beginning, 7th edition, page 220), measurements of the largest asteroid, Ceres, found that it does indeed have a dense, rocky core and primarily a water-ice mantle.10
All of the above discussion is significant when trying to determine what happened in the sky over Russia this Friday.  If the object seen streaking across the sky in the video was a large meteor, one that was composed (in accordance with Dr. Brown's theory) of smaller rocks ejected from earth during the events surrounding the flood, and held together by a weak "glue" of internal ice (formed from the ejected water when the "fountains of the great deep" erupted), then this theory would explain why the meteor might come apart during its violent encounter with the earth's atmosphere.  It would also explain the trail of white smoke from the disintegrating meteor.  It might even explain the series of explosions heard by those on the ground and recorded in many of the videos posted to the web.

The hydroplate theory would seem to support the explanation that a large meteoroid, a composite of smaller rocks held together by a weak ice "glue," intersected earth's atmosphere and the heat of the friction of this hurtling object caused the frozen water to vaporize, leaving the dramatic trail and also leading to the breakup of the composite object into many smaller pieces.  Some of those pieces may have actually hit the ground, with explosive effects (the video above seems to support that assertion).  Previous posts have also discussed this phenomenon, in conjunction with the disintegration of comets, such as Comet Elenin in 2011 (Dr. Brown's theory asserts that comets, asteroids, and meteoroids are all related phenomena, caused by the catastrophic flood on our planet).

Of course, it is always possible that something else took place over Russia -- that this dramatic footage was not caused by a meteor at all but was some form of man-made rocket or weapon over the Urals.  However, if indeed it was a meteor, the white trail does not mean that human missiles of some sort actually shot it down.  It is quite possible that, if it was indeed a meteor, the footage now appearing on the web provides yet more evidence that the hydroplate theory of Dr. Walt Brown is correct.