'Hell of a fright': Fireball seen streaking across North Island skies

<p>A fireball was seen streaking across the lower North Island sky last night, with some reporting they heard a "huge boom". </p> <p>Talula Hodder captured the fireball on her dashcam as she was driving home from Palmerston North to Levin. </p> <p>"It was a fully clear night otherwise, so I was like, wait, what was that? Then the next second, this massive flaming fireball thing came tearing across the sky," she told 1News. </p> <p>"I was like, 'holy s***'... I was quite freaked out." </p> <p>Hodder said the glow "just flooded the sky" and described a "slight sizzling sound" and a "boom" to go with it. </p> <p>Fireballs Aotearoa, the public face of a citizen camera network monitoring meteors, said it received multiple reports of a "bright fireball meteor" over the lower North Island at around 10.26pm. </p> <p>It shared a video from Toatoa in rural Ōpōtiki, Bay of Plenty, with a similar yellow glow falling from the sky. </p> <p>Steve Wyn-Harris of Fireballs Aotearoa was in his spa pool when the sky lit up behind his house. </p> <p>"There was a big flash, and then another flash," he told 1News. I thought it must be lightning". </p> <p>It was when his phone started buzzing that Wyn-Harris realised he'd witnessed a fireball. </p> <p>He said data collected by the cameras was still being analysed, but there were some exciting possibilities. </p> <p>Wyn-Harris said the fact people heard the fireball "tells us that it got low enough into the upper atmosphere to potentially drop a meteorite or meteorites onto the ground".</p> <p>Once analysis is done, "we will have a much clearer idea whether this meteoroid got low enough and slow enough to stop burning up, go into dark flight, and also where it might have landed". </p> <p>He said there was a "rough idea" of where it may have landed, but could not share any details until there was more data. </p> <p>Followers commented on the Facebook post, sharing what they saw. </p> <p>"It was so big and bright it looked like it was right outside our window! Gave us a hell of a fright," one person in central Hawke's Bay said. </p> <p>A person north of Tūrangi wrote: "It was huge, the ball was orange with a purple tail. We could see black soot coming off it. It appeared to crash very close to the east of us."</p> <p>Others reported seeing it as far north as Auckland. </p> <p>Some said they heard a boom when the fireball first lit up the sky.</p> <p>"Wondered what the noise was, like someone hit a wheelie bin with a stone," a commenter from Ruby Bay in Tasman wrote. </p> <p>"Our household heard a huge boom right about that time," another said. </p>