There’s something deeply humbling about waking up at 5 a.m., stumbling toward the coffee machine, and learning a piece of interplanetary shrapnel just screamed across the Midwest sky at nearly 100,000 miles per hour. That’s what happened on Nov. 23, when a bright green fireball tore over the Great Lakes region and gave the Midwest its own cosmic jump scare.
Dozens of witnesses saw the meteor streak above Michigan, Wisconsin, and Indiana before it exploded into a bright flash. NASA later confirmed the object was moving around 98,500 mph as it sliced through the atmosphere.
Michigan Storm Chasers caught the entire descent on video, first revealing the footage in a Facebook post. Another clip sent to the American Meteorological Society (AMS) showed the green streak arcing across the sky from Coldwater, Michigan, while a second video from Tecumseh captured the same glowing sprite from a different angle. People as far away as Lancaster, Ohio, roughly 340 miles from the event, reported seeing the flash.
WATCH: A 100,000-MPH Green Fireball Lights Up the U.S. Sky
According to NASA, the meteor became visible 62 miles above Hubbard Lake and then burned for 82 miles before breaking apart 46 miles above Lake Huron. The agency wrote that the fireball “appears to have been caused by a small comet fragment” and was not tied to any ongoing meteor shower. Even the Leonids, which dominate November skies and travel at blistering speeds, were ruled out.
The color, that strange green glow, came from metals such as nickel, AMS notes. Heated at extreme speed, these elements flare into specific pigments. Sodium burns yellow, magnesium burns blue-white, and nickel burns green. If a cosmic object ever streaks overhead in hot pink, we’ll have bigger problems.
Green fireballs are rare but not unheard of. A similar one appeared over New Zealand in July 2022, and another tore across the sky above Lake Ontario a few months later. NASA identified it as the smallest asteroid ever observed before impact, measuring barely 16 to 24 inches wide.
The Midwest fireball was a one-off, but the videos feel pretty darn eerie. There’s nothing like watching a piece of a comet scream across three states to remind you that Earth is a rock, space is full of flying debris, and every once in a while, the universe lets us know it’s still in charge.
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