This study presents a novel strategy for identifying an impact event on a structure from vibration measurements. Compared to triangulation techniques that require at least three sensors on a plate-like structure, only one sensor is used in this work for localizing the impact point. The proposed approach consists in extracting specific modal ponderations as a signature of impact location. The force reconstruction problem is simultaneously addressed by fitting a parametric law. The proposed procedure captures the main load history parameters such as the impact time, its duration and its intensity. An impact test campaign is performed on a metallic plate, equipped with one accelerometer only, to confirm the validity of the proposed single-sensor approach. The methodology is efficient for accurately localizing impacts that are applied anywhere on the plate and for quickly estimating the main load history parameters.