So I was sitting in my southwest Wisconsin garage with the lights off around 10pm on Wednesday, April 14th 2010 enjoying the night air when the sky briefly pulsed with dim, white light.  I got off the chair and jogged to the open garage door which looks east, and by the time I could get there the entire sky and ground was lit up brighter than daylight with a bright white light.  I gasped and held my breath for a moment, fully expecting a massive impact or explosion, but there was none.  I immediately scanned the now dark sky, and noticed three orange-yellow lights / fireballs streaking from northwest to southeast.  They disappeared as fast as they appeared.  The lights were in a straight line to one-another and kept equal distance from one-another at obvious high speed.  After checking the time, 10:06 pm, I went upstairs to tell someone else to come outside.  As I was standing inside, now about 10:08 pm, a series of loud, deep, explosions could be heard which shook the house and rattled the windows.  This had a loud duration of about ten seconds, and tapered off more quietly for nearly ten more seconds.  At this point I was fairly convinced that this was a meteor and subsequent hit.  Apparently that is not yet clear, and the eyewitness accounts and the meteor "experts" disagree.  This now has me wondering...

Below are some images and videos captured across southern Wisconsin!!  -  Click an image to zoom and click in the video window to watch the video.

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Dim lights Download Embed Embed this video on your site

     This dazzling lightshow was seen across Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Minnesota, and Missouri.  Reports have this phenomenon ranging from a single bright white streak to a pulsing yellow, blue, green, orange, red ball or balls (as many as twelve).  It seems the "explosion" was only heard in southwest Wisconsin, however.  There is some expert suggestion that the explosion was a sonic boom, and not an impact:

     "When an object passes through the air, it creates a series of pressure waves in front of it and behind it, similar to the bow and stern waves created by a boat. These waves travel at the speed of sound, and as the speed of the object increases, the waves are forced together, or compressed, because they cannot "get out of the way" of each other, eventually merging into a single shock wave at the speed of sound. This critical speed is known as Mach 1 and is approximately 1,225 kilometers per hour (761 mph) at sea level at room temperature."

Meteors are common, but most are not as dramatic as the one reported Wednesday 04/14/10.  Was this a meteor sighting??  While no official determination has been made of what caused the fireball, a meteor shower called Gamma Virginids began April 4 and is expected to last through April 21, With peak activity April 14-15. A large meteorite could have caused the brilliant fireball that has been reported.

UPDATE 04/16/10:

  "we have the first glimpse at what was responsible for the light show that was seen in at least six states Wednesday night.  WKOW-TV spoke to University of Wisconsin researchers who got a chance to observe the meteorite. They are not allowed to say where it was found, but they did say it is the first one they have ever witnessed in 28 years of work on the campus.  The person who found the rock did not want to be named and also only loaned it to the UW researchers for an hour.  On Wednesday evening just after 10:00 p.m. people in Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, and Missouri saw the large fireball shoot across the sky. The FAA has confirmed it was a meteor and it was captured on video by a television station in Milwaukee, a police officer in Portage, Wisconsin and a police officer in Elma, Iowa."

If you have comments, video, more photos of this event, or just want to share your experience in this event, feel free to use the "comment" area of this posting.  This post will be updated as more information is reported.

Sources:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4tbmL_CxXs

http://www.india-server.com/news/apparent-meteor-dazzles-through-24516.html

http://www.fox6now.com/news/witi-100415-midwest-meteor,0,3637830.story

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2007/01/15/meteors-over-wisconsin/

http://www.wkowtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=12314363

http://www.fox11online.com/dpp/news/local/meteor-sighting-throughout-wisconsin-and-neighboring-states

http://breakingnews.gaeatimes.com/2010/04/15/meteor-in-wisconsin-21558/

http://www.wisn.com/video/23158086/index.html

http://www.facebook.com/pages/I-survived-the-April-14th-meteor-explosion/114119128611931?ref=ts

http://addins.wrex.com/blogs/weather/?p=7664

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