This article was published in the daily newspaper The Cincinnati Post, Ohio, USA, on July 31, 2002, the author is Craig Garretson.
Was it a meteor, a flash of lightning or something not quite of this world that streaked across the skies of Greater Cincinnati at about 1:30 a.m. Tuesday [July 30, 2002]?
The National Weather Service received "a good number" of phone calls around that time from people around the tri-state, reporting the unusual phenomenon. Wright-Patterson Air Force Base outside of Dayton also received calls about "blue lights in the sky," said spokesperson Andrea Attaway-Young, but they couldn't be seen from the base.
National Weather Service meteorologist Greg Tipton said callers described it as a "blue streak moving across the sky."
Some said it was a "blue-white explosion" — but not accompanied by any sound. Others said it had a tail, like a comet, Tipton said. Another described it as "a bolt of blue lightning arcing above the clouds."
Area amateur astronomers — who didn't see the meteor — didn't want to speculate on what it could have been, but the American Meteor Society's Web site says meteors are frequently reported as being blue-white in color, are often described as "explosions" and sometimes have a tail — technically, a "train," a glowing trail of superheated oxygen.
Thousands of meteors streak across the sky every day, but most aren't seen either because they happen during the day or over an uninhabited area, such as the ocean. Last year, there were over 200 sightings of so-called "fireballs" that were big enough to be seen with the naked eye, the society's Web site said.
