At 1:31 AM on Monday morning, Wisconsin’s skies lit up green as a falling meteor burned up through the atmosphere.
Thankfully, a host of security and dashboard cams have witnessed the event. So here’s how a meteorite falls in that horrible image quality only security cams can boast:
Last night's Midwest #Meteor #Fireball over Lake Michigan as seen from the University of Wisconsin campus. pic.twitter.com/Ho2hOsquhX
— Brad Panovich (@wxbrad) February 6, 2017
The footage was recorded from the University of Wisconsin campus. It’s black and white so you can’t see much of what’s happening.
Here’s the meteorite from another angle — the dashboard of a police car in Glendale:
One of our officers caught this on their squad camera at about 1:30 AM today. The meteor lit up the sky and then came into view. pic.twitter.com/rRQazjC9Ro
— Glendale WI Police (@GlendaleWiPD) February 6, 2017
The flash was big enough to be seen all the way over in Chicago.
Check out this INCREDIBLE video of the #meteor this morning as viewed from a Lisle, IL police car dash cam! Thanks to Lisle PD for sharing! pic.twitter.com/uYELKkBxRO
— NWS Chicago (@NWSChicago) February 6, 2017
Later, the Milwaukee National Weather Service released some weather radar readings which they suspect captured the meteorite.
Our midnight crew saw the flash from the meteor early this morning. Checking back at our radar images, we saw this! #swiwx #wiwx pic.twitter.com/KMdsBW7HIc
— NWS Milwaukee (@NWSMilwaukee) February 6, 2017
And finally, this video the American Meteor Society put together shows the meteorite’s estimated trajectory and visibility range. It also places the rock’s final resting place in the middle of lake Michigan.
If there’s any bit of the meteorite that didn’t burn, that’s most likely where it ended up. But considering it was probably really small to begin with (not much larger than a baseball or a football), there’s slim chances anything survived the burn and the crash.
