Giant Green Flaming Meteor Flies Over Chicago

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By Andrew Follett

Midwesterners woke up Monday morning to the site of a bright green fireball flying through the sky.

“The fireball was seen primarily from Illinois and Wisconsin, but witnesses from Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Iowa, New York, Kentucky, Minessota and Ontario (Canada) also reported the event,” the American Meteor Society says on its website. The society has received more than 185 reports of a fireball in the sky.

A police dash-cam in Illinois captured footage of what appears to be the meteor exploding into a fireball.

228 am – Here’s video of the meteor! Taken in Plover, Wisconsin #swiwx #wiwx pic.twitter.com/AQ6gh5Vk8p

— NWS Milwaukee (@NWSMKX) February 6, 2017

Several thousand meteors of this magnitude occur each month, but the vast majority of them appear over unpopulated areas.

“It was basically visible for a long distance,” Ricky Castro, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Chicago office, told The Chicago Tribune. “It was certainly an interesting event, uncommon for the area.”