TREASURE VALLEY - Caldwell resident Glenda Nash was on her way to babysit her grandchildren early Tuesday morning when she saw a flash light up the sky. “I never saw anything like it before. The light was kind of blue-gray, then it turned orange,” Nash said. “I was just driving down the road and I saw a big light and a big flame and it just hit the ground. It was neat but kind of scary.”

A Federal Aviation Administration duty officer in Seattle confirms that the streaking light in the sky was a meteor. The meteor was seen across a wide area of the Pacific Northwest early Tuesday - including in Seattle, Boise, Portland and Spokane.

"I'm convinced it was a meteor," said Geoff Chester, spokesman for the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. "It was a classic description of a fireball."

Chester speculated the meteor was the size of a big suitcase and had been orbiting the sun for millions of years before entering Earth's orbit.

Nash said it appeared that something hit the ground and exploded near where she was driving on Emmett Road. Another witness reported seeing the object strike the Earth in a remote part of Adams County, in southeast Washington, but it had not been found.

An FAA spokesman in Seattle, Mike Fergus, says a Horizon Airlines pilot saw the meteorite hit earth about 6:45 a.m. Fergus says the pilot reported a flash and a burst of light near Washington State Route 26 and the Lind-Hatton Road in the southeast corner of Adams County.

The Adams County sheriff's office had no immediate reports of damage, injury or a meteor landing in the area, about 175 miles east-southeast of Seattle and 90 miles southwest of Spokane.

Chester said people commonly think they see a meteor hit or about to hit the ground, when it is nowhere close. Most meteorites that strike the Earth are never found, he said.

"When you see objects like this in the sky your sense of scale is distorted," he said. "It's a common optical illusion."

Nash’s daughter Michele Hymas, of Middleton, was driving towards Star when she saw the bright light. “I just saw a huge flash in the sky and it lit up the whole hillside between Middleton and Star. I called my husband and I told him and he thought I was crazy.”

Hymas began to doubt what she saw but then heard other people calling in to radio station MIX 106 asking if anyone knew what the light was. “It reminded me of the big flash when you get your photo taken. It was just a big light. It was weird,” Hymas said.

KTVB NewsChannel 7 received dozens of calls about the meteor from across their viewing area as well.

“I saw it from Hailey,” Robb Thomas wrote. “It was in several pieces kind of stuck together. It had a flat front on it and when it went behind the mountains it seemed to impact and make two large flashes and several smaller ones.”

"It started out like a falling star, but brighter," Jerilyn Sterkel said. "It was greenish, then turned yellowish, then white, then finally red when it got to where it looked almost like it was going to hit in the field next to where I was driving, on Meridian Road close to Amity. It was almost like a firework shot from the sky."

A television station in Spokane also got viewer calls from much of Eastern Washington and North Idaho about the meteor.

Various callers to the station say it resembled summer lighting, a rocket, a satellite or an exploding transformer.

The East Oregonian of Pendleton, Ore., said people in that city reported hearing a sonic boom after seeing the sky light up.An Idaho Air National Guard security camera caught the image of the meteor at about 6:30 a.m. Tuesday morning at Gowen Field. To view the footage, go to www.idahopress.com and click on Local Video. Select "Meteor over SW Idaho."