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Skies over Western Washington lit up late Monday night (January 16) thanks to mysterious light streaking in the air. Corey Clark, who lives in Rainier Valley, is one of many residents who witnessed the stunning sight and recorded it.
“We just kind of saw this bright flash and kind of looked at each other and went ‘woah,'” Clark recounted to KING 5, sharing his surveillance footage with the news station. “You could see the streaking coming from the south to the north and it just getting bigger and brighter as it came further into the atmosphere."
Daniel Kohen shared dashcam footage of the "shooting star" when someone asked about it on Twitter. He was driving with his wife on Interstate 5 in Mount Lake Terrace when it happened. William K. Smith, who lives in Tacoma, also captured it on his surveillance camera.
Now that the spectacle is behind us, what exactly was it? Dr. Chris Laws from the University of Washington said it's likely a meteor, ranging from the size of a baseball or basketball, breaking up in the atmosphere.
"By the time that they pass through a handful of miles of the Earth's atmosphere, though, that really changes their behavior," he explained to KING 5. "You get the sort of exploding phenomenon that apparently so many people got to see last night."