The American Meteor Society received over 150 reports of a bright light in the sky around 11:00pm on Monday (local time) from residents of Florida, Georgia and Alabama.
Many also called the police to ask if it was an alien invasion unfolding. Initially the police thought that it was a transformer explosion.
But dashboard camera footage from one of their squad cars in North Port revealed the probable cause to be a meteor.
NASA classified the fireball as an extremely bright ‘bolide’ and reported that it caused no damage.
According to the scientists, several thousand meteors bombard Earth every day, but the majorities of them remain unnoticed in daylight or appear over oceans or uninhabited regions.
In 2013, a much bigger meteor broke apart 15 miles above the ground near Chelyabinsk, Russia, creating a shockwave equivalent to a 500-kiloton explosion –30 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 – and injuring over 1,200 people.
