Residents on the northwest bank of the United States and southwest Canada were surprised as a flame fiercely blazed through the night sky on October 12. The American Meteor Society website received almost 200 eyewitness testimonies on Friday, according to a report from Newsweek.
As quoted by Newsweek, a Molalla, Oregon resident reported and said, "I was watching TV inside and saw the streak out of the corner of my eye. It lasted long enough for me to turn and watch it before it exploded."
A Seattle, Washington resident also said that he had never seen anything like that. The person also claimed that the sound that the object made was like a firework on the Fourth of July as it raced through the sky for only a few seconds. "I was looking towards the ground at my phone and was able to notice it by the sound and the brightness," the person said.
Meanwhile, the fireball incident was recorded by various people's home security cameras or doorbell cameras properly. A video of the incident was also posted by the American Meteor Society on YouTube on Friday.
The video depicts how the sky seems black and calm until a dazzling ball of light erupts out of nowhere. The thing then flashes brilliantly before departing from view, leaving a small trail behind it. The entire event takes two to three seconds at maximum.
According to Newsweek, a fireball is an outcome of a space rock entering the Earth's atmosphere at tens of thousands of miles per hour and colliding with air resistance. This causes the item to get so hot that it blazes through the sky, frequently burning up.
Trevor Ireland, the professorial research fellow in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Queensland, Australia, told Newsweek, "Fireballs and shooting stars are pretty much the same things except fireballs are deeper into the atmosphere."
