While some witnesses said a meteor that zoomed across the Pacific Northwest skies Tuesday morning struck the Earth, University of Washington scientists said it likely disintegrated in the sky south of Tollgate.

People in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and British Columbia reported seeing the bright fireball streaking across the sky about 5:30 a.m. At least one person said the object exploded on impact in eastern Washington and another report from southeastern Washington said someone felt tremors from the blast.

But UW scientists issued a news release that said the meteor didn’t crash into the ground but instead disintegrated above the Blue Mountains about six miles south of Tollgate in the North Fork Umatilla Wilderness – at an altitude of about 19 miles.

Scientists used readings from instruments at the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, at the UW campus in Seattle, to determine the fate of the space visitor that they called a meteoroid.

Stephen Malone, professor emeritus of space sciences and former director of the seismic network, worked with colleagues at UW and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland. While the UW news release said the meteoroid appeared to come in at a sharp angle, preventing a calculation of a precise trajectory, the scientists triangulated the location of the disintegration using readings from seismometers.

Malone noted the readings might be somewhat inaccurate, however, because the seismometer closest to the disintegration point has been out of commission since January.

But the meteor’s explosion might not stop meteor hunter Steve Arnold from departing his home in rural Arkansas to look for bits of black rock in the Blues.

Arnold has been tracking down space rock that makes it to Earth for about 15 years. In October 2005 he found a 1,430 pound pallasite meteorite in Kansas, setting a U.S. record.

A pallasite meteorites may come from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and are the rarest of all meteorites.

Arnold said each year there are a few fireballs that get meteor hunters hoping, but only one every three or four years produces anything.

Museums, researchers and private collectors will buy meteorites, Arnold said, which go for about $10 a gram, or about half the price of gold. But that price goes up depending on where it may come from and what it looks like.

Arnold sold his hefty 1,400 pounder last year for about $300,000, he said.

Fireball amazes eyewitnesses

Eyewitnesses from Washington to Idaho called or e-mailed the EO to describe seeing the fireball. All of the witness seemed delighted with the early morning sky show.

Semi driver Roxana Snowdale e-mailed she was in Washington near the Oregon border on I-82 Eastbound and twice saw “white lightning.”

“I looked up into the sky and saw a huge orange fireball, then the whole sky lit up like it was daytime, then back to dark, the fireball had dimmed, then a huge fireball again, the whole sky lit up like it was midday, then dark again and it was gone,” she said.

She also said other truckers using citizen band radios talked about the event.

“It was an amazing and unbelievable sight, but I am glad that I saw it. It was the most amazing thing I have ever witnessed in my life. I am 52 years old,” she said.

Connie Fellows in Athena e-mailed her account. She said she and two others were on a morning walk when they saw the meteor.

“It was pretty spectacular. We saw the ball of light and the tail, it lit up the whole sky and then about 2-3 minutes later we heard two rumblings like a Harley Davidson idling or thunder!” she wrote.

Fellows called the sighting the “coolest thing,” but added it happened so fast she doubted anyone could have taken a photograph.

Teresa Clark e-mailed from Boise, where she was working on the airport ramp. She said in her 53 years she had never seen anything like it.

“It started high and northwest of the airport as a large light in the sky and very quickly turned to a green and blue large trail. As it reached about level with the buildings in the area it appeared to ‘blow up!’ It lit the entire sky.”

Surveillance cameras in the region recorded images of the fireball and the dramatic lighting it created.

Wildhorse Resort & Casino confirmed its cameras filmed the meteor, but so far it hasn’t released the images.

The Umatilla-Morrow County Education Service District’s security cameras caught the change in lighting the meteor caused. Images from schools in Irrigon, Milton-Freewater, Pendleton and Umatilla and placed those on the district’s Web site at http://www.umesd.k12.or.us/.