© iStock A Fireball Landed in Lake Michigan This Morning

By Kate Horowitz, 02/07/2017

Sky-watchers from Kentucky to Canada got quite a surprise this morning: a dazzling ball of light streaking through the sky. Debris from the meteorite arced from the atmosphere toward the ground, eventually plunging into Lake Michigan.

So far today, the American Meteor Society (AMS) has fielded 222 reports from people in Minnesota, Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, New York, Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas, and Ontario, Canada. The event is technically called a “sporadic fireball”—completely random and unanticipated by astronomers.

“We don’t track this in space,” AMS operations manager Mike Hankey told ABC News, “so if you saw it, you were lucky you were at the right place at the right time.”

Police in Lisle, Illinois, were lucky enough to catch the fireball on one of their dash cams, and generous enough to share:

Check out this INCREDIBLE video of the #meteor this morning as viewed from a Lisle, IL police car dash cam! Thanks to Lisle PD for sharing! pic.twitter.com/uYELKkBxRO

— NWS Chicago (@NWSChicago) February 6, 2017