What is thought to have been a bright meteor, streaking across the predawn Northern Colorado sky Thursday, sparked reports from dozens of early birds who happened to view it.

Loveland resident Shawn Kraft caught it as he drove northward on U.S. 287, between Owl Canyon and Livermore, on his daily commute to Laramie where he works for the city as an information technologist.

"Here's what I could equate it with," Kraft said. "You know those little sparklers that kids waved around before they were illegal? It was like that. Green. Bright green. Really bright green, in a pitch-black sky. It took about a second or a second and a half."

The "fireball log" maintained by the American Meteor Society, an online gathering spot for amateur observers, contained nearly simultaneous reports of the same sighting -- a bright green meteor seen between 5:46 and 5:50 a.m.

The reports came from Colorado, Wyoming and Montana.

"It was good-sized," Kraft said. "It's the biggest thing I've ever seen in the sky like that."

A meteor is the name given to the light emitted by a meteoroid, a small rocky object that enters the earth's atmosphere from space, as it burns in the upper atmosphere.

A rare meteorite is a surviving fragment of a meteoroid that impacts the earth's surface. The vast majority of meteoroids vaporize in the atmosphere.

A sonic boom of some sort caused windows and walls to shake over several counties in North Central Florida Thursday night, and Alachua County sheriff's officials got the explanation that it was "military manuevering of some kind."

Alachua County Sheriff's Lt. Art Forgey said late Thursday night that the "west side of Gainesville flooded our communications center" around 9 p.m. with calls about a window-clattering and wall-shaking boom felt by many residents, particularly those in west Gainesville.

On March 22 in Yongjin, Sichuan, China, Peng Xianyong witnessed a light in the sky. It brightened the landscape as it passed, red and green with a long, streaking tail.

That would have been strange enough, but the next morning, Xianyong discovered four yellow blobs in his front yard, arranged in something that looked like a Chinese character.

He approached one of the blobs and, well, he poked it with a stick. This revealed its peculiar insides, a bloody red and brown. Apparently, it smelled of "fresh plants" and was soft as eggs, but did not "spread" when broken.

It's probably a mold or fungus, but this isn't the first time a strange substance has popped up after a meteor sighting. After the Russian meteorite incident last month, "alien" slime was located at a Somerset nature reserve. And, you know, there's a long history of stuff called Star Jelly, mysterious goo said to arrive during meteor showers.

Source: WCC Daily (In Mandarin)

Here's a heat map of the witness sightings for the March 22nd, 2013 Northeast Fireball.

Here's an estimated trajectory model for the meteor spotted in the northeast earlier tonight. This model is calculated by computing the intersection points of each witness with all other witnesses. These points are then averaged for the starting and ending points of the meteor. Click here for map below to view event sightings page.

Initial Sighting Reports

21 March 2013 - Amanda, Miami, FL, USA 22:15 EST

About 2-3 seconds duration. Southeast direction. Blue/green color. Very bright like a firework. It was traveling southeast, continuing in that direction.

21 March 2013 - Kara Rhoden, Starke, FL USA 22:00

5 seconds duration. East to West direction, I was facing North. Bright green fireball with a trail. No sound, it was as bright as the moon. Fragments fell off the tail. Never seen anything like it...very fascinating.

Initial Meteor Sighting Reports

21 March 2013 - Brittney Rattray, Calgary, Alberta @ 21:31 MST

3 seconds duration. I was Northwest facing. Green colour. Very bright falling star. Bigger than I've ever seen.

21 March 2013 - H.C., Calgary, Alberta 21:20

2 seconds duration. I was facing North. It travelled from top to bottom with a slight decline to the left. Bright whitish green colour, with a fairly bright tail. It was big and quick.

21 March 2013 - Stephany Cartwright, Drayton Valley, Alberta Canada 21:20

6 seconds duration. Northwest direction. Purple/blue/silver colour. As bright as the sun. There was a long tail.

Over 350 sighting reports so far... This was a MAJOR meteor event, seen in at least 14 states!

22 March 2013 - Cliff Livesay, Sykesville, Maryland, USA @19:55

4 seconds duration. W-E direction. Bright white color. As bright as the Moon. I caught it from the corner of my eye out the window, watched it streak across and burn out.

22 March 2013 - Mark Nucker, Ellicot City, Maryland, USA @19:57

2-3 seconds duration. Moved from my left to right, north to east direction. Green-blue color, as bright as the moon. It moved quickly while descending.

A meteor bright enough to be classified as a fireball lit up the night sky over eastern North America, providing a spectacle witnessed in at least 13 states, Washington, DC and two Canadian provinces, the American Meteor Society said.

The society verified more than 300 witness sightings from Ontario and Quebec down to the southern U.S. state of North Carolina with more than 100 reports yet to be reviewed, said Mike Hankey, an observer for the American Meteor Society.

Southern New Jersey - Just after 3 o'clock Tuesday afternoon residents in Atlantic, Cape May, and Cumberland counties say they felt multiple earthquake-like tremors that rattled their homes and offices. Absecon resident, Kay Stadlmeir, said, "I don't think it would be an earthquake, but what could it be? It's just really odd." Somers Point resident, Bob Mower, explained, "There was a rattling of my windows and I felt the house shake just a little bit - it was unusual." Stadlmeir told NBC40, "It has to be something really big to be witnessed in such a widespread area of South Jersey."

The reports vary from region to region. Atlantic county emergency management officials confirmed with the U.S. Geological Survey that it was not an earthquake. The next thought was that military training or an aircraft flying by might have caused the shakes.

Both the 177th Fighter Wing in Egg Harbor Township and Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst confirmed none of their aircrafts were in the area at that time. Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst is still working to confirm whether or not any ground training was happening at the time, although it is unlikely that would cause such a widespread shake.

Stadlmeir said, "I really don't think it's a sonic boom because, you know as I said before, I've experienced them before and this is nothing like that." Mower told NBC40, "That was real unusual. I almost wondered if I was dreaming on that one."

After initial reports of the shakes came in, NBC40 put the word out on Facebook to see who else felt it. Immediately we received hundreds of responses from all over South Jersey.