Pretty sure I just saw a meteor/meteorite.

[Crushellon (Tim)]

Hi guys.

I was just sitting at some lights on my way home from picking up dinner and I think I may have seen a meteor/meteorite but I have never seen one before so I'm not sure. It was quite low and not far from me as far as I could tell, but its location was ambiguous enough for me to not go looking for it. It didn't have a long tail like the images that come up in a Google search, so that didn't confirm it for me. It was more of a teardrop shape and looked kind of like a fireball that was mainly green with white and red on the outside and in the tail and puffed out about 50-100m from the ground.

Has anyone seen anything like this before? Meteorite? Thoughts?

[Nikolas (Nik)]

It would not be 100 metres from the ground and still be a fireball and you lived to tell the tale, it would have been 30000 metres from the ground low on the horizon.

[SkyWatch (Dean)]

It sounds like a bright meteor or "bolide", maybe a piece of rock as big as a cricket ball or larger: the "puffed out" bit was probably as it exploded due to the heat of atmospheric entry.
These can be quite colourful, and often you will see green "fire" as they burn up. They can be bright enough to light up the whole sky, and quite spectacular if you are lucky enough to be looking the right way at the time!
Usually these would be 30-60km above the ground and travelling at anything upward of 50,000km/hour, and if it appeared to be near the horizon it was probably many 10's of km away. It is very unlikely you (or anyone else!) would be able to find its remains... ;(

All the best,

Dean