Meteor Lights Up Midwest Sky With Dramatic Fireball

— -- A meteor lit up the sky in about twelve states in the U.S. and Ontario, Canada, early this morning, causing a stir on social media among those who witnessed the light show.

"This meteor is what we call a sporadic fireball, which is a random event," Mike Hankey, operations manager at the American Meteor Society (AMS), told ABC News. "We don’t track this in space, so if you saw it, you were lucky you were at the right place at the right time."

The sighting of a sporadic fireball like this happens only three to four times a year, according to the AMS, and because it was picked up on Doppler radar, the organization was able to spot its landing in Lake Michigan about five minutes after the first report.

The AMS received 222 reports this morning from those who saw the sporadic fireball from Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, New York, Kentucky, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, and Ontario, Canada.