Fireball streaks across night sky. Cameras from Tri-Cities to the Cascades catch it

A Pasco man caught an unusual site on his home security camera early Wednesday.

Josh Brooks was getting off work from a night shift when he saw a motion alert for his Wyze Cam a few hours earlier at 12:44 a.m.

It had captured what appeared to be a meteor lighting up the night sky north northwest of his home near the north edge of Pasco.

Similar sightings of a meteor burning up were reported after being captured on a Washington state wildlife camera in the Cascade Mountains and on a doorbell camera in Spokane.

On Brooks’ video a bright fireball streaks across the sky toward the Earth for a couple of seconds and then appears to burn out.

“It lights up the sky behind it,” Brooks said. “You can see all the clouds.”

Another north Pasco resident also spotted the fireball from her backyard when she took her dog outside at 12:45 a.m.

“I saw a HUGE greenish light fall from the sky!! It was very bright and eerie looking!! My gosh!!! Unbelievable!!,” she posted on the Nextdoor app.

Brooks is interested in science, but is not an expert, he said.

However, the video was similar to video captured last month of a meteoroid about three feet wide falling toward northern France, he pointed out. Meteorides later were found on the ground.

Brooks scoured the NASA database of near-Earth objects and tracking networks Wednesday morning without finding other sightings.

But about 10:15 a.m. the Washington state Department of Transportation posted a video captioned “Snoooww on the mountain, a fire in the sky” along with musical notes on its Snoqualmie Pass Twitter account.

The video was captured on a wildlife overcrossing camera during the night, it said.

“Since our biologists only identify animals, we don’t know what it is,” WSDOT posted. “Perhaps our weather friends can help us.”

The National Weather Service in Spokane responded and initially speculated that the “flash” on the wildlife camera could have been clouds clearing and the camera readjusting.

But with more information, the Spokane station agreed that it appeared to be a meteor.

The Pendleton National Weather Service said the wildlife camera video appeared to match the time of the sighting by Brooks in Pasco, and the Spokane weather service then received doorbell camera video of a meteor sighting in Spokane.