Boom!
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Add Earthquakes as an interest to stay up to date on the latest Earthquakes news, video, and analysis from ABC News.Residents of southeast Michigan were left a bit shaken Tuesday night after a big bright flash lit up the sky and the ground beneath them shook.
A flying saucer? No. A shooting star? Not quite.
The National Weather Service eventually solved the mystery, tweeting "USGS confirms meteor occurred around 810 pm, causing a magnitude 2.0 earthquake."
WWMT/Zack Lawler
According to the United States Geological Survey, the earthquake was centered about five miles west-southwest of New Haven, Michigan, located about 40 miles northeast of Detroit.
Initially though, as curious residents took to social media in droves to share videos of the dazzling display, the National Weather Service said it wasn't so sure what these star-gazers saw.
“When Armageddon is near, you better get out of of here. Looking like a Deep Impact. I ain’t afraid of no ‘stroid” #metrodetroitmeteor pic.twitter.com/MdibIt82TZ
— Topher No Grace (@topherlaine) January 17, 2018
"After reviewing several observational datasets, the NWS can confirm the flash and boom was NOT thunder or lightning, but instead a likely meteor. We continue to monitor feeds from astronomical agencies for official confirmation of a meteor," read a tweet posted nearly two hours before the NWS confirmed it was a meteor.
#meteor scared the buhjesus out of us pic.twitter.com/qFcFMotFDi
— PirateHooker (@BlackBeerded) January 17, 2018
The American Meteor Society's report map illustrated that the meteor was visible in six states and in Canada.
The sparkling display sent social media users into a frenzy, making "#meteor" a top 5 trending topic in the U.S. on Twitter. One Twitter user captured the entire display in a 10-second dashcam video.
ABC News' Darren Reynolds and Brendan Rand contributed to this report.
