A fiery streak lit up Northern California’s night sky Thursday evening, dazzling onlookers from Sonoma County to the Sacramento region.
The blazing object appeared around 7:45 p.m., sparking speculation over whether it was a meteor, rocket launch, or satellite debris. NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office did not immediately respond to inquiries, but experts say the spectacle was likely not a natural meteor. The Aerospace Corp., a Southern California nonprofit research and development center that tracks orbital debris, predicted several Starlink satellites would reenter Earth’s atmosphere Thursday night.
Dozens of people across the North Bay reported seeing the fiery trail.
In Occidental, artisan vendor Jessy McGibbons was packing up her booth at the farmers market when the crowd began pointing skyward.
“Last time everybody made the same noise because of a double rainbow, so I immediately looked up at the sky,” she said. She saw a glowing ball streak across the sky, pulled out her phone and began recording. “It was only my second time as a vendor. “Last time it was a double rainbow and then it was a meteor show. What are we gonna see next time?”
In Cloverdale, Matt Kellogg and his family were celebrating his father’s 72nd birthday when his niece spotted the glow.
“We saw this blazing sort of fireball going from west to east, almost straight across the sky,” Kellogg said. “It was wild.”
He described the object as bright and sparkling, with fragments breaking off.
His son, Theo, caught a video, though Kellogg said the recording didn’t do it justice. The sight reminded him of the way the Autobots arrive on Earth in the “Transformers” movies.
“I’ve never seen anything like it before,” he said.
Sightings of the fiery reentry were also reported from Rocklin, Shingle Springs, Salida and the Sacramento area.