VIDEOS: Meteor shines, vaporizes across the Seattle night sky

VIDEO: Meteor shines, vaporizes across the Seattle night sky

People all over the Pacific Northwest have been trying to figure out what fell from the sky Wednesday night. The National Weather Service confirmed it was a meteor.

SEATTLE - People all over the Pacific Northwest have been trying to figure out what fell from the sky Wednesday night. The National Weather Service confirmed it was a meteor.

The meteor became visible just after 10:00 p.m. For a split second, the night sky appeared to switch to daylight. Numerous people in the Seattle area posted their videos on Twitter, asking the National Weather Service (NWS) to identify the flash of light that woke them up in the middle of the night.

According to the American Meteor Society, they received 143 reports about a fireball over British Columbia, Oregon and Washington state Wednesday night.

The National Weather Service says the most common date to see the Orionids meteor shower is Oct. 22. On average, spectators can see around 10 to 20 meteors per hour at its peak.

Experts with the NWS say meteors typically enter the earth's atmosphere at speeds of 10 miles per second. That is equal to 36,000 mph.

Lincoln City Police Department

In Oregon, the Lincoln City Police Department also captured the meteor on one of their dashboard cameras. Sergeant Liden says the meteor emitted a bright green light and looked similar to ‘flare in the sky’.

In a lot of the videos, a trail of smoke can be seen on the tail end of the meteor before it burns up. According to the National Weather Service, what we see "burning up" is air undergoing a compaction and compression ahead of a fast moving meteor called incandescence.