Does anyone have a mental model for why an airburst generates so much energy? For the Chelyabinsk meteor, quick math shows the kinetic energy was about 2e15 jo

Does anyone have a mental model for why an airburst generates so much energy? For the Chelyabinsk meteor, quick math shows the kinetic energy was about 2e15 joules or .5 megatons. Apparently, ALL of the kinetic energy was converted to radiation and heat, even though it never hit the ground. My mental model was that something that big (20m) would just punch through the atmosphere and hit the ground, converting all its kinetic energy, and leaving a nice crater. An airburst, instead, is caused by the inverse operation, i.e., the atmosphere punching into the meteor and shredding it. Hmm. In the airburst case, the meteor is slowed down just as if it had hit the ground. Okay. Model updated. Thanks for reading. Yeah, for some reason, I was thinking that stuff that got vaporized by the atmosphere didn't generate as much energy compared to the stuff hitting the ground.