National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office

If you happened to be awake shortly after 10pm on Wednesday night, you may have assumed that you saw a distant lightning flash and the roar of thunder shortly thereafter. While there were some thunderstorms along the Mississippi River in Wabasha and Buffalo counties, this flash and roar was reported to be due to a meteor entering the earth’s atmosphere. A web cam facing west from the NWS La Crosse out toward the city of La Crosse was able to catch the flash that occured, but not the actual meteor.  Here are two images from this web cam, one from before the flash and the second at its brightest point about 8 seconds later (note that the time is off by approximately 10 minutes):

The Doppler radar from the National Weather Service in La Crosse was able to observe this entry across southwest Wisconsin in Grant, Iowa and Lafayette counties. Shown below are a few images from the lowest radar slices (0.5 and 0.9 degrees) of reflectivity and velocity picking up on the entry between 6,000 and 12,000 feet.

 

 -Zoomed in 0.5 degree reflectivity image from the NWS La Crosse radar at 1010 pm at about 6,000 ft above ground level