The College of Lake County Police caught sight of a meteor on one of the agency communication center's television monitors. They were able to witness a bright blue flash across the night sky.
Chicago Tribune reported that Tom Guenther, the police department's chief, said that the bright blue flash caught their attention. A surveillance camera at Parking Lot 5 on College of Lake County's Grayslake campus captured a video of the meteor as it passed through the night sky at about 1:25 a.m.
Video from police cruisers' dashcam also caught sight of the fireball streaking through the sky in Wisconsin and Illinois. According to the American Meteor Society, there were also sightings in Indiana and Michigan, among other states.
Jeff Last, a meteorologist from the National Weather Service office in Green Bay, Wis., said that the celestial body was accompanied by a sonic boom that caused the houses in the region to quake. He added that the radar witnessed the meteor pass over Lake Michigan. It is unknown whether it landed in the water or broke up in the sky.
CLC officials uploaded their surveillance video on Facebook. It had already garnered over 29,000 views and helped the page reach the 10,000 fan mark.
Lake County Sheriff's Office spokesperson Sgt. Christopher Covelli noted that the department got a call about the meteor at 1:27 a.m. from a man who was asking if they "saw the same thing he just saw in the sky." At that point, neither the caller nor the officials knew what the bright blue flash in the sky was. Shortly after, the same caller contacted them again, saying that he believes that it was a meteor and that he was going to notify the meteorological society.
It was previously reported that two massive objects in space are hurtling toward Earth, one of which is expected to come close to our planet this month. It has been dubbed as 2016 WF9.
It is expected to come near the Earth's orbit at an estimated distance of 32 million miles or 51 million kilometers from our home planet. NASA has also confirmed that it is "not a threat to Earth for the foreseeable future."
