Residents from around the Sacramento area spotted a fireball Sunday night as it streaked across the skies over Northern California.
Nearly 240 sightings of the meteor were reported just after 8 p.m. Sunday over California, Arizona and Nevada by the American Meteor Society, its officials said. The celestial event was captured around the capital region and elsewhere on home security and doorbell cameras.
In California, people reported a bright flash visible from Sacramento to the Bay Area and Central Coast, as well as the southern San Joaquin Valley and eastern Sierra, according to the society, which shared videos of the event on its website.
Web cameras at University of California’s Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton also captured the speeding meteor just before 8:20 p.m., UC officials said in a social media post.
A meteor that streaked across the skies of Northern California on Sunday, March 22, 2026, is seen in the bottom left corner of a image taken from the Lick Observatory’s SkyCam web camera on Mount Hamilton. The meteor was seen as a greenish streak across the Sacramento region. Lick Observatory 
A meteor is seen streaking across the sky from a dashcam in a vehicle driving on the Bayshore Freeway section of Highway 101 near Palo Alto on Sunday, March 22, 2026. Tobi Beetz via the American Meteor Society
The observatory later shared images from its SkyCam and HamCam2 cameras, showing the meteor as a greenish streak moving from north to south.
This story was originally published March 23, 2026 at 12:05 PM.
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Darrell Smith is a local reporter for The Sacramento Bee. He joined The Bee in 2006 and previously worked at newspapers in Palm Springs, Colorado Springs and Marysville. Smith was born and raised at Beale Air Force Base and lives in Elk Grove.