An unexpected meteor shot across Midwestern skylines Sunday night, and a retired couple thinks part of it landed here, something astronomers say is entirely possible.
Nancy Rettinghouse had some of her family over to watch the Super Bowl on Sunday night but she ended up watching a much brighter spectacle.
"I was sitting in my kitchen, watching the Super Bowl...Out in the back lot I saw a big yellow flaming thing falling straight down. I yelled and everyone asked what happened."
When she told them she thought she had seen a meteor fall into a nearby vacant lot, no one believed her.
That dazzling object seen falling from the sky over Missouri, Kansas and other Midwestern states Sunday evening was a meteor, though where it ended up is uncertain, experts said. Many people reported seeing the round, orange object or hearing a thunderlike sound, some of them while watching the Super Bowl on TV. Astronomers and space buffs said Monday the description was consistent with either a meteor or debris that sometimes falls to Earth from old spacecraft. The North American Aerospace Defence Command, however, determined Monday that the object was not man-made but rather a meteor.
From southeastern Wisconsin to as far as Des Moines, Iowa and St. Louis, people reported seeing balls of fire, possibly meteors, streaking across the sky Sunday night. No major meteor showers were expected in the northern hemisphere on Sunday night, said Jim Lattis, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison astronomy department's Space Place. But he said it was possible that a minor shower may have been what prompted calls to authorities. The National Weather Service's Sullivan office said reports were called in from Iowa, northern Illinois and on up to Green Bay.
Dozens of people in Missouri and southern Illinois reported seeing flaming objects falling from the sky Sunday evening. People reported small objects that looked like bright lights or something burning, with flaming tails behind some of them, said Ken Tretter of Missouri State Highway Patrol in St. Louis. He said the reports came in from a widespread area, including St. Louis, Cape Girardeau and Pettis County in Missouri and near Alton and Bunker Hill in Illinois.
We’ve had several reports Sunday night of a big ball of green light that was seen in the sky heading towards the north. NORAD says it was probably a meteor.