Meteor Shower Lights Up the Night Sky
MILWAUKEE - "This huge tail was following this big ball, and it was just as bright as the sun," says Jeff Boyle.
Boyle was on his way from work after 10 p.m. Wednesday when he saw the strange object falling from the sky in Waukesha. He drove to where it seemed to have landed near Crites Field, only to discover a multi-vehicle crash at a nearby intersection.
Boyle wasn't alone in witnessing what was determined to be a meteor shower.
People reported seeing it in Kenosha, Madison, Milwaukee, Waukesha and Sheboygan among other places.
"This meteor was bright enough to be in the class of a fireball," said Astronomy Magazine editor Michael Bakich in an interview with Newsradio 620 WTMJ's "Wisconsin's Morning News."
Reports of the bright fireball flooded county sheriff dispatch centers across the southern half of Wisconsin.
National Weather Service offices in La Crosse, Davenport and Des Moines, Iowa as well as St. Louis and Kansas City, Missouri received numerous reports of the fireball from law enforcement officials and the public.
A black and white rooftop webcam captured video of the fireball over Madison.
Click here for the Fireball video from UW-Madison AOS/SSEC.
Pete Pokrandt of the U.W.'s Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Department said, "you can see a plane going by at first, and then the fireball comes and in the brightest shot, you can actually see the contrail from the plane that is going by."
Pokrandt said the images are taken every 10 seconds.
People in the southwestern Wisconsin town of Blue River said the sky directly above them turned bright green. A short time later, three members of the local fire department and rescue squad discovered at least two separate small fires burning in the woods along "Old Highway C."
They also found the top part of one tree broken off and on fire. The break in the tree was about 25 to 30 feet off he ground, and the top section of the tree was on fire too.
The meteor shower began April 4th and is expected to last through April 21st, with the peak activity April 14th and 15th.
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