Meteor Lights Up Midwestern Sky

People from Wisconsin down to Missouri reported seeing a meteor that lit up the midwestern sky Wednesday night. It appeared a little past 10 PM.

At exactly that moment, Steve Baron was in the window seat of a Southwest Airlines jet flying from Las Vegas to Chicago. Suddenly, he saw a flash he describes as "impossibly bright."

"Like if you lit magnesium on fire", Baron explained. "It was like daylight outside, only it was the brightest day you've ever seen."

Baron, a vice president at Chicago-based Local TV L-L-C, is a former broadcast meteorologist. But this didn't look like any weather event Baron had ever seen.

Baron said he wonders, "Is it, like, a missile or something? Are we flying over a bombing range? Then it dawned on me that it had to be coming from outer space."

Scientists say he's probably right. The object is presumed to be a meteor entering the earth's atmosphere, or possibly, a piece of space junk.

Andy Ervin is a senior meteorologist with the National Weather Service in the Quad Cities. He says the object was a meteor, "certainly the brightest meteor I've ever seen". Ervin says most eyewitnesses the Weather Service has talked to say it was "exceptionally bright or probably the brightest thing most folks have seen in the sky beyond lightning or the sun".

Forecasters say a meteor shower called Gamma Virginids began April 4 and is expected to last to April 21 with peak activity Wednesday and Thursday. But they couldn't immediately confirm if the Midwest meteor was part of that shower.

(Additional reporting from the Associated Press)