Carol Handsor and Gillian Andrews were greeted with a bright welcome during their usual morning stroll on Thursday.

While walking on a trail along Mud Creek behind John McGregor Secondary School, the Chatham residents witnessed a bright object falling from the sky.

"It was a huge ball of fire," Handsor told The Chatham Daily News.

"It had sort of a blueish tinge to it. The end of it was coming down with sort of a tail of flames. It went down quick."

Wayne Edwards, a postdoctoral astronomy student at The University of Western Ontario's physics and astronomy department, confirmed Thursday afternoon what the Chatham residents saw was a meteor.

"We do have one meteor that was seen across our entire network," Edwards told The Daily News.

"It was moving at about 55 kilometers per second. So it was motoring."

The UWO has a network of seven all-sky cameras stationed throughout southwestern Ontario detecting meteors on a daily basis, Edwards said.

"Meteors are falling all the time," he said.

"Some are brighter than others. This one was particularly bright . . . it was early enough in the morning, so lots of people could have seen it. This is one of the few ones that have been seen across our network."

He said the meteor started at a 106 km altitude and made it down to 92 km.