Just before 4 a.m., a surging fireball of some kind lit up the sky over Arizona.
“At 3:56 am this morning I… witnessed two fireballs,” said one commenter on a video of the burst posted to Facebook by FOX 10 Phoenix. “One second the sky was completely dark, the next it was lit up like mid-day.”
So far, there has been no official confirmation of the source of the light, but many suspect the fireball was a meteor.
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Josh Bangle of the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff Arizona told NBC 12 News that it could have been a meteor, or a piece of space junk falling to Earth.
As of 11 a.m. ET, the American Meteor Society reported that they’d received more than 140 reports of a “fireball event” over Arizona. AMS said the fireball was seen primarily from Arizona, but witnesses from Utah, New Mexico, California, Texas and Nevada also reported seeing something.
Arizona media and residents quickly began sharing videos of the supposed meteor on social media this morning. In videos shared from surveillance cameras and dashcams, the light from the blast is so bright that night time appears to turn into broad daylight for a few seconds.
Many on Facebook and Twitter report that they heard a loud boom along with the bright flash of light. Others posted pictures to Instagram of a curly vapor trail that seems to have been left from whatever flew across the sky.
There were no immediate reports of damage from any impact, and the Arizona Geological Survey didn’t pick up any impacts, according to AZCentral.
Though some on social media speculated the burst in the sky could have been a missile of some kind, a spokesman from Arizona’s Luke Air Force Base told Phoenix Arizona’s 3TV News that there had been no reports of a missile launch from any bases.
