BURSTA suspected meteor lit up the night sky over the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley Tuesday night.
Bright lights flashed then there was a boom that rattled parts of the Lower Mainland Tuesday night. Initially speculation is a meteor. pic.twitter.com/NVQPiE82D1
— Langley Advance Times (@LangleyTimes) March 4, 2026
Around 9 p.m. there were two flashes of light followed by a sonic boom, loud enough to shake the ground and cause the Earthquakes Canada seismograph in Haney to spike shortly after 9 p.m.
According to online repoprts posted by the American Meteor Society (AMS), a non-profit scientific organization for amateur and professional astronomers, it was very likely a meteor.
In his post to the site, Comox resident Jim. S was sure it was a bolide, the word for an an exceptionally bright meteor.
“It was larger, brighter and much closer than any meteor I have ever observed.”
According to the reports on the AMS site, the fireball direction of travel appeared to be north, into the mountains.
As well as the Fraser Valley and Lower Mainland regions, sightings were reported from as far away as Comox on Vancouver Island and Clinton in Washington State, just north of Seattle.
Among the 17 eyewitness accounts posted to the AMS website, B.C. resident Lee-Ann W., a longtime star gazer and meteor shower watcher, described it as “the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in the night sky.”
“I feel so lucky to have witnessed what I truly believe, was a big, bright, red fireball. I thought maybe it was a flare at first, but it was so large and bright that didn’t make sense. I then thought it was a plane in trouble, on fire and it was about to crash as it came over the mountain, and traveling downwards, but there was no sound, no flashing lights, just silence.”
Other witnesses reported there was a delay between seeing the flashing light of the fireball and the sonic boom.
Port Coquitlam resident Simon Hardy-Francis, who posted a video to the AMS website, reported seeing flashes of light, then hearing a loud boom three minutes later, with local seismographs reacting “at exactly 9:12.”
In Merritt, Candice W. enthused it was “incredible and felt like such a once in a lifetime experience and I’ll never forget it!”
Another Merritt resident, Ryan T. called it “super cool! [The] second time I’ve seen a decent-sized green meteor burning across the sky.”
On Facebook, Aldergrove resident Jessika Houston described how “my house trembled and a boom went off so loud that I heard it inside my hosue and noted the time.”
It appeared the meteor burned up before it could hit the ground. There were no reports of damage.