Photo: sarah_bergquist/Twitter

Huge Fireball Lights Up the Sky Above Canada

News Astronomy
by Dayana Aleksandrova Feb 25, 2021

Early on Monday morning, residents of the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan witnessed a huge fireball flashing across the sky.

A giant meteor lit up the sky at 6:24 AM local time, surprising people in Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, and more. Residents of Vulcan County and Stavely in Alberta, and Elstow in Saskatchewan, reported witnessing a strong light followed by a bright streak in the sky.

One Calgary journalist managed to capture the surprising event on camera, tweeting a video that captured from their doorbell camera:

“What was that?” another witness tweeted.

“It sure woke me up, I can tell you that. I was kind of lucky to see that. You rarely see that,” Saskatoon resident Joe Speer shared with Global News. Lea Storry, an Edmonton resident compared the sighting to having her “own little astronaut moment but on Earth.”

The meteor is classified as a “fireball” due to the particularly bright light it exuded, according to Dr. Chris Herd at the University of Alberta. “It means that some kind of a rock has come through the atmosphere and the outside is heated up to give us that bright fireball that people have caught on their doorbell cameras and other places,” Herd shared with 630 CHED Mornings.

Where the fireball debris landed is yet to be determined.

Discover Matador