Fireball Over Northwest Believed to Be a Meteor

A huge fireball was spotted over northwestern Oregon and southern Washington Wednesday afternoon, and one expert said it probably was an unusually large meteor.

A motorcyclist traveling on a coastal highway reported the sighting to the U.S. Coast Guard about 1:30 p.m. Later, dozens of witnesses called in reports to radio stations from the coast to south-central Washington.

Bruce Spainhower of the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry said that, judging from the various descriptions, the fireball was probably a bolide, a brilliant meteor that appears to explode as it falls through the atmosphere. Some bolides are large enough that unburned portions of them hit the ground as meteorites.

Witnesses described the fireball as plainly visible on a bright, sunny afternoon, and as moving from west to east. Many also reported hearing a sonic boom after they saw it.

Spainhower said that if descriptions of the size and the trajectory were accurate, the meteorite may have landed somewhere in eastern Washington.

He said that most meteors--often called shooting stars--range in size from a pea to a walnut and burn up in the air.

Spainhower said that a bolide of such magnitude is very rare, and that anyone who saw it should call in reports to help scientists determine if it landed, and where.

Navy Cmdr. Doug Gillies, a spokesman for the U.S. Space Command in Colorado Springs, Colo., said his agency did not know what the object was.