Midwesterners enjoying a little post-Christmas downtime outdoors on December 26th got a big surprise when a huge fireball—an extremely bright meteor—streaked through the sky around nightfall (around 5:30 p.m CST).

Witnesses described seeing a flaming green ball as bright as the sun shoot across the sky before fragmenting and disappearing on Thursday night. Some even reported several delayed sonic booms and other sonic effects.

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The American Meteor Society says it has of meteor sightings in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska – even as far away as West Virginia – which makes this cosmic event the 5th most reported fireball in the history of the AMS online reporting system.

Though meteors like this aren’t particularly rare, spotting one as visible as this one in a highly-populated area is. Since more than 70-percent if the earth's surface is water, many stunning cosmic events like this one go unseen. But in this case, not only did witnesses on the ground have a chance to catch the rare event, so did modern technology, like this (above) in North Liberty, Iowa.

"We can't see every direction every minute of the day and night," Joe Wright, operations Director at the University of Missouri-Kansas City's Warkoczewski Public Observatory and vice president of the Astrological Society of Kansas City , "So this totally caught us off guard, just like the one in Russia and the one over Arizona."

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