Scores of people call the American Meteor Society to report a “green fireball” streaking across California skies in what is yet another meteor sighting. A meteor hit the Russian Ural Mountains region earlier this month, injuring over 1,000 people. Additional meteor sightings were reported throughout the American West and the South days later.
Thursday’s sightings were reported in Ventura, Anaheim, Van Nuys, Los Angeles, Paso Robles, San Francisco and Santa Barbara, according to NBC Bay Area.
According to witnesses, the incident occurred at about 10:35 p.m., with most reporting having seen a “green fireball,” while others described it as white with streaks of blue.
The Daily Mail reports Leslie A. of La Crescenta told the American Meteor Society: “I actually saw flames with a trail of glowing lime green attached to it. Very large in size. We are up toward the mountains.”
NBC News reports that a photographer Susan Lary, of the Southern California Weather Authority snapped a photo of the fireball shown below with with a 1-minute exposure “in Lancaster, Calif., facing southwest.”
Witnesses reported seeing the fireball as far north as Sacramento and as far south as Malibu, about 400 miles apart.
The sighting comes soon after a meteorite impact in Western Siberia that injured more than 1,000. Within 24 hours of the Russian incident, residents of Bay area in northern California reported seeing a fireball streaking across the sky.
Ed Krupp, director of the Los Angeles Griffith Observatory, told NBC Los Angeles: “Somewhere on the planet there is an object like that entering the planet at least once a day.”
He said the the latest meteor observed in California on Thursday was probably only about the size of a basketball. He said: “What you are really seeing is a glowing column of gas. It’s extremely visible because of the tremendous heat that is generated.”