Report Bright Lights in Sky Over at Least Five States

The Associated Press
Published: Jul 8, 2004

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) - A meteor shower Wednesday night lit up the sky from Texas to western Tennessee, prompting a flood of reports to law enforcement officers throughout a five-state region.
The lights flashed across the sky shortly after 9 p.m. in portions of Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Tennessee.

A spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration said the spotting was a meteorite, probably several.

"The front part was fiery red and it had a greenish glow behind it and a long red tail," Barbara Hays, who lives in Bossier Parish, La., told Shreveport television station KSLA.

A spokesman for the National Weather Service in Fort Worth said the sightings were not tied to a weather event.

"Whatever the object was, it had to be pretty high up in the sky and pretty big for such a large area of people to have seen it," forecaster Mike Berry in Shreveport, La., said in a story in Thursday's Tyler Morning Telegraph.