WATCH: Meteor streaks across Midwest sky Monday morning

Fireball reported in Michigan, 9 other states

DETROIT – The American Meteor Society received more than 100 reports of a meteor flying through the sky around the Midwest - including in Michigan.

The fireball was seen streaking through the sky early Monday morning.

There were more than 170 reports from ten different states and Canada.

The preliminary estimated trajectory plotted from the witness reports shows the meteor was traveling from the Southwest to Northeast ended its flight on the Lake Michigan somewhere between Sheboygan, WI and Manitowoc, WI.

A fireball is another term for a very bright meteor, generally brighter than magnitude -4, which is about the same magnitude of the planet Venus in the morning or evening sky. A bolide is a special type of fireball which explodes in a bright terminal flash at its end, often with visible fragmentation.

Several thousand meteors of fireball magnitude occur in the Earth’s atmosphere each day. The vast majority of these, however, occur over the oceans and uninhabited regions, and a good many are masked by daylight. Those that occur at night also stand little chance of being detected due to the relatively low numbers of persons out to notice them.

Vivid colors are more often reported by fireball observers because the brightness is great enough to fall well within the range of human color vision. These must be treated with some caution, however, because of well-known effects associated with the persistence of vision. Reported colors range across the spectrum, from red to bright blue, and (rarely) violet.

The below dashcam video was captured around 2:30 a.m.


About the Author:

Ken Haddad has proudly been with WDIV/ClickOnDetroit since 2013. He also authors the Morning Report Newsletter and various other newsletters, and helps lead the WDIV Insider team. He's a big sports fan and is constantly sipping Lions Kool-Aid.