Tony Hamilton and his wife Nancy were just outside King Wednesday night, nearing his mother-in-law's home on the Chain O'Lakes near Waupaca, when the sky lit up.
"It was really wild. It really blew us out," said Hamilton, who is retired and lives in California.
"I've seen meteor showers, but this one was at the tree tops. We really thought it was going to land. It was just gigantic.
"It was incredible."
The Associated Press said the meteor that streaked across the Midwestern sky momentarily turned night into day, rattled houses and caused trees and the ground to shake. There were no immediate reports of injuries.
Radar information suggests the meteor landed in the southwest corner of Wisconsin, either Grant or Lafayette counties, said Ashley Sears, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service's Milwaukee office. Officials in both counties said no one has reported seeing a meteor or crater.
But if you missed the show Wednesday night that was seen from Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin as far away as St. Louis, there isn't much of a chance you'll see another one.
You can probably see meteor showers if the sky is clear the next few nights, but to see another one this large is a long shot, said Michael Briley, a physics professor and astronomer at the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh.
"To run into something as large as this is kind of a surprise," he said.
"The odds are they are not going to see something like this. They will see more shooting stars.
"The odds of seeing something like this are you might as well play the lottery."
Officials said the fireball lit the sky, was large enough to show up on weather radar in Iowa and was photographed by a University of Wisconsin space lab from the school's Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences.
A Howard County, Iowa sheriff's deputy also captured the exploding fireball on video, and dispatchers in the Outagamie County Communications Center said they received about 20 calls on the sky show between 10 and 10:15 p.m.
"It had to at least gotten to within a few thousand feet of the ground for (Iowa weather radar) to pick it up," said Rich Mamrosh, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Green Bay.
"There must have been a debris cloud behind it at least a half mile wide or a mile wide to pick it up.
"Some part of meteorite must have hit the ground or something. It is unusual for a meteorite (to be) bigger than a big rock."
"We heard there were reports across the upper Midwest and the Great Lakes," he said. "Sometimes it looks like it is going to land nearby and it is hundreds of miles away."
Forecasters said there is a meteor shower called gamma virginids occurring from April 4 through April 21, with peak activity Wednesday and Thursday.
Despite the light show it put on, Briley said the meteor was probably about the size of a human head.
"It most likely disintegrated," he said. "If it did originate with the comets it would probably look like a normal rock.
"It's tough because we don't know much about it at the moment. They are typically dust trials left behind by comets.
"If it did originate with the comets it would probably look like a normal rock."
John Lee: 920-993-1000, ext. 362, or jlee@postcrescent.com
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