Outro
video interessante
Meteor wakes up Mid-Columbia early birds
A bright blue meteor with an orange and yellow fireball tail startled many Mid-Columbia residents and people as far away as the Canadian province of Alberta on Tuesday morning.
Some also heard a sonic boom after the meteor lit up the sky at 5:31 a.m.
"The light was so ... close to me and so bright, I swerved off the road," said Dante Martinez of Richland. "I was shaking because it was so close. I've never witnessed or seen anything so bright ever. ... It was so super bright, my eyes had to adjust a little."
Martinez was on his way to work in Umatilla and was by the bridge near McNary Dam when he saw the light, which was about a half-mile wide, he said.
"My whole life I've always been looking in the sky, always looking for things," he said. "I've seen meteorites and falling stars and what not, but I've never seen anything like this."
A number of pilots reported seeing the meteor streaking through the sky from Boise into Washington and one initially said it landed in Adams County around 5:45 a.m., but officials with the Federal Aviation Administration later said that report was erroneous.
If a meteor crashed into Earth, it likely did so in the southeast area of the state, said Roy Gephart, an earth scientist with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and an avid amateur astronomer. He said the meteor was traveling in a northwest to southeast direction and "when it disintegrated and exploded, it was low in the southeast sky," he said.
Meteor Streaks over the Pacific Northwest Sky 