It's a bird, it's a plane ... no it's a meteorite?

If you were lucky enough Monday, at around 12:45 p.m., you looked to the skies over Salem County and saw a majestic, flaming fireball falling through the atmosphere.

"So far we have 30 reports of a fireball moving in a general west to east direction as seen from the northeastern United States," said American Meteor Society official Robert Lunsford Monday afternoon. "Daylight fireballs are rare and must be exceedingly bright to be noticed with the sun in the sky."

One sighting happened right here in Salem County.

Woodstown resident Walt McGuniess called the Sunbeam and described the meteorite as it flew over top of Woodstown High School.

"I was out on a walk with my son and then I looked over top of Woodstown High School and this huge meteor came hurdling through the sky," said McGuniess. "It was spectacular, like a huge fireworks display."

Lunsford called it a random event.

"This was most likely a random event not associated with any known meteor shower," said Lunsford. "This object was most likely the size of a small car before striking the upper atmosphere (and beginning to burn up)."

Lunsford said the fireball terminated over the Atlantic Ocean.

"There is no hope for recovering any possible debris," he said.

A Ridgefield Park man said he saw the fireball after glancing out a window during a break from his work Monday. HL Devore works at GalleryCollection.com in North Jersey.

"It was an amazing sight. I have never seen anything like it," said Devore. "There was a flash of light then a trail of smoke."

Devore took to the computer and as with most types of technology these days the word spread.

Descriptions of sightings exploded on the social networking websites Twitter and Facebook. Posts came from people in New Jersey, Philadelphia, Connecticut, New York and even Egypt.