A possible meteor or space debris has made a dramatic entry into earth's orbit over central New Zealand this afternoon, according to WeatherWatch.

WeatherWatch has received dozens of eyewitness reports about the rare daytime fireball seen - and heard - across a number of regions, in particular around the lower half of the North Island and upper South Island.

It occurred around 1.50pm today.

Video: Supplied/Stuff.

"At lunch today we saw an orange light coming down from the sky on a diagonal, with smoke coming out behind it,” says a WeatherWatch commenter.

"I'm in Paraparaumu near the beach and I've just seen out my kitchen window a long fast streak of light following by what looked like an explosion towards the Hutt Valley going in an East to West direction. It is overcast so it was under the cloud cover. The explosion looked about four times bigger than the sun is in the sky,” says an eyewitness.

Video: Supplied/Stuff.

Space scientist Dr Duncan Steel says that it will be interesting to see what people say as eyewitness accounts are still coming in.

"In my lifetime I've only ever seen one daytime meteor," says Dr Steel.

"They are due to macrometeoroids in the atmosphere coming in very quickly, typically 30km per second. To be seen during the daytime it would need to be quite large, something the size of a rugby ball or bigger - that's what makes them rare. The shooting stars you see at night are typically about the size of a grape.

"It's possible it could be a re-entering piece of space debris that humanity has put into orbit. But generally it's more likely to be a natural meteoroid because we actually get hit by about a hundred tons a day of natural meteoroids.

"We do have databanks showing expected re-entries of objects from orbit and maybe it's possible to identify this object from that. But if not, it's probably just a random lump of rock from an asteroid which happens to have hit the Earth and got people very excited here in New Zealand."