‘White hot fireball’ streaks across coastal California sky, reports say
A fireball streaked through the skies across California’s coast, with several people who saw it saying it was extremely bright and fast, according to reports.
At least 25 people across over 300 miles along the coast saw the fireball and submitted reports to the American Meteor Society describing what they saw in the sky late Monday, May 19 and early Tuesday, May 20. People as far south as Morro Bay, as far north as Ukiah and as far inland as Truckee reported seeing the bright fireball.
“It was VERY bright and fast,” someone in American Canyon said. “Barely missed my trees and burned out about 3 feet from hitting the ground. It was SO close.”
Someone in Foster City said they were looking at the sky hoping for shooting stars when they saw “a very bright blue light falling from the sky.”
“Way bigger than shooting stars,” they said. “I’d never seen anything like it.”
“It looked relatively big compared to other shooting stars so maybe it could’ve been debris that was closer to us,” someone in Oakland said.
“Bright white light with a flame trail and a burst of light occurred approximately 2-3 seconds,” someone in Mountain View reported.
“What just happened in the sky?” someone asked on the San Francisco subreddit. “I just saw something that looked like a white hot fireball outside of my window going from South to West in the span of 1.5 seconds. Did anyone else see that?”
Several others said they had seen it as well.
“I saw that! It was a shooting star!” someone said. “I got a clear view of it while walking outside, was really bright and faded away but still going until my vision was blocked by trees. Absolutely unreal, I have never seen shooting stars before but that was super bright and felt like shooting star premium.”
Someone commented that they had seen what looked like a green fireball from Berkeley.
“So interesting!” the original poster said. “For me it was white with a trail of blue.”
Someone in Oakland said it appeared blue or green to them and “brighter than any other I’ve ever seen.”
