DES MOINES, Iowa [KCCI]  — Reports from some Iowans and others across the Midwest, Friday morning, say they saw an unexpected spectacle in the sky. A fireball meteor streaked through the atmosphere around 6:15 a.m. The meteor itself was located over southwestern Wisconsin but was visible from hundreds of miles away.

NASA’s Meteor Watch reports that “over 70 eyewitnesses in the states of Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota have filed reports on the American Meteor Society website of a bright fireball seen this morning (August 23) at 6:13 AM Central Daylight Time. An analysis of these accounts indicates that the meteor was first seen at an altitude of 50 miles above the Wisconsin town of Fairchild, moving slightly east of South at 36,000 miles per hour. Traveling 39 miles through the atmosphere, it brightly flared twice before breaking up 29 miles above the town of Shamrock.”

Meteors often break up as they enter the atmosphere and can explode, which is just what Meteor Watch says happened: “The fireball broke apart with an energy of approximately 60 tons of TNT and the flares were easily detected by the Geostationary Lightning Mappers on the GOES 16 and GOES 18 satellites. The available data indicate that the meteor was produced by the atmospheric entry of a small asteroid 3.5 feet in diameter and weighing roughly 4000 pounds.”