‘Huge & Colorful': Fireball Lights Up Texas Skies, Rattles Some Homes (VIDEOS)

Folks living across Texas were offered a shocking surprise late Thursday night after a fireball appeared in the skies, lighting up the night and producing a sonic boom.
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Having received more than 95 reports of the fireball, the American Meteor Society (AMS) noted that most of the sightings took place near Texas' Fort-Worth, Houston and San Antonio areas. One sighting was recorded in Savanna, Oklahoma, and two others were reported in Louisiana's Lake Charles and Duson areas.

​"I have never observed a meteor before, but this was absolutely beautiful!!" Rebekah S, of College Station, Texas, wrote in her report to AMS. "It was such a brilliant color of blue and was very big!"

"I felt very fortunate to have stepped outside with my dogs at just the right time to observe it on such a clear, cold beautiful night like tonight! I'm 36 years old and have never seen anything like it in my lifetime!" she added.

Christopher Cato, who was driving in Killeen, Texas, at the time, managed to capture the phenomenon on his dashcam while he was out trying to make some change by driving with Uber. "I swear it hit the ground close by!!!" he wrote.

​Texan Mary Ann Miron told local Austin news station KTRK that she spotted the fireball at roughly 9:30 p.m. local time, describing it as a "giant ball-like meteorite."

"[It] changed the rainbow spectrum of colors until it turned into a beautiful turquoise," she said. "I've seen shooting stars, but this was huge and colorful!"

​Charissa Giles, of Austin, told news station KXAN that she felt "the sonic boom from a huge meteor," adding that the fireball "lit up the whole sky in the area of Granada Hills in Southwest Austin, Hamilton Pool Road/RR12 and Wimberley."

And Giles wasn't the only one to report a sonic boom. Several witnesses in Texas' Travis and Hays counties told KXAN that the boom was so strong that it rattled their windows.

Now, as for where remnants of the fireball might be hiding, AMS concluded that it likely touched down "somewhere South East of Johnson City, Texas."

​Earlier this year, the US' National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) released footage that it manage to capture of a fireball that traversed the skies of Alabama. The US space agency reported at the time that the August fireball was "at least 40 times as bright as the Full Moon."

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