Wild video captures meteor in western WA, BC | FOX 13 Seattle

Added: 2026-05-07

[00:00:00]A wild video shows a meteor rip across the sky and some people right here in western Washington could see it. This video from viewer Charles Woodruff shows it from the dashcam and Fox 13 meteorologist Alona McCauley joins us now. So, we got a lot of different videos of this which is really cool, but does this some lone meteor that came down or is it part of a meteor shower?

[00:00:20]How is it different?

[00:00:22]>> what? It's a great question. I mean, we often talk about these meteor showers that we can see at different times of the year, right? The Perseid and the Leonid meteor shower usually in November. These are not very different, but typically with those they more look more like shooting stars because they are way higher up in the atmosphere. So, they're not burning as they enter into the Earth's atmosphere. This one is likely a part of a comet that broke off >> Mhm. and it's sometimes made out of this rocky substance, usually a little bit of metal associated with it, too. So, we're talking either nickel or iron. So, it burns up differently when it enters into the Earth's atmosphere and because it's got those metals in it, it will usually give it that greenish tint as we were just seeing in that video.

[00:01:05]>> how large do you think it is? Yeah, pretty big. So, NASA said it was about 2 ft in diameter. So, to give you some perspective, that's usually about the size of a manhole cover in the streets here that you might see and 1,000 lb.

[00:01:19]So, again, another measure of perspective, that is usually the size of a small grizzly bear. So, it wasn't small.

[00:01:25]>> Yeah. Um but of course, you know, it burns up pretty quickly once it enters >> Well, that's what I want to ask. Is there a meteor right now now on the ground there that, you know, somebody could go and find? There I'm not going to say yes or no. It's not going to be a big piece of it because it likely disintegrated. It burned up pretty good once it entered into our atmosphere, but it is possible that some small chunks of it that look like rocks could be around somewhere. So, I did a little bit of digging into NASA's website and what they're estimating is that it started to enter this meteor started to enter the Earth's atmosphere somewhere between Spokane and Chelan and then it had that trajectory kind of going across the sky, which is why we're getting all this cool video coming out of western Washington and NBC.

[00:02:11]>> Yeah, what I haven't heard is whether it made a large noise when it came in and burned up.

[00:02:16]>> I don't know. Nobody had said typically they don't. Again, you know, usually with something like that, you're not going to hear it. Usually you're just seeing the light coming through the sky because that travels at a different rate of speed than sound does.

[00:02:30]>> Yeah, thank you for the science lesson, Alona. This is very very cool stuff. I really hope somebody finds a little piece of it cuz I'd love to see that.

[00:02:37]>> Take a picture and share it with us.

[00:02:38]>> want to thank Jamie Nestegard for providing that really cool video from Shelton. We'll be right back.