Meteor Believed to Have Lit Up Sky

A tremendous bluish-green flash of light, apparently from a blazing meteor, illuminated the night sky over a 400-mile area from Michigan to New York.

Shortly before 1 a.m. EDT Friday, a Canadian patrol officer in Windsor, Ontario, sighted “a flaming object moving southbound over the skies of Windsor . . . glowing red with a trail of gases behind it,” police Sgt. Ken McFarland said.

“It was about the size of an airplane, with an orange tail behind it, and at the top it seemed to have a crown of greenish light,” said Joe Stocco of Liverpool, N.Y., near Syracuse. “I’d never seen anything that had an orange color like this before.”

Police in Windsor, just east of Detroit, said they believe that a chunk of the meteor slammed into a vacant mobile home, burning it to the ground.

But officers who scoured the charred remains of the trailer looking for evidence couldn’t find so much as a rock, Windsor Police Sgt. Joseph Monteleone said.

Peter Brown, a researcher with the University of Western Ontario, said he would be surprised if the fireball caused the trailer fire.

“It’s not impossible, but it’s highly unlikely,” he said. “There has never been a substantiated case when a meteor lands and causes a fire.”

The trailer was a charred frame, with evidence that something had hit its tin roof and gone through.