NUFORC Sighting 60346

Occurred: 2007-12-12 17:45 Local
Reported: 2007-12-12 19:28 Pacific
Duration: 7-10 minutes
No of observers: 0

Location: Bellingham, WA, USA

Shape: Light

Red/orange light over Bellingham, Washington

My 22 year old son and I had just left my house, heading southwest. Straight ahead, about a 45 degree angle, we saw a single medium to bright light. I asked him to watch it as I was driving. I asked him to look for the red and green sidelights to see if it was a plane. He could not see anything.

He mentioned that we could be seeing the headlight(s) of a small plane. I said that I didn’t think they had headlights of that color.

I made a left 90 degree turn. The light was nearing our position, so I could not see it anymore but he could.

He rolled down his window to listen for noises. He could hear nothing.

When I got to the next intersection there was a store there with a large parking lot. I pulled in and parked, turned off my lights and engine and got out of the car.

By the time I saw it again it was almost directly above me and moving slowly to the North. My son asked if it could be a helicopter and again, I didn’t think they had lights of that color.

He suggested that it might be a hot air balloon. The color of the light did look like it could be a flame of some sort, being a red/orange shade. That made the most sense, although if it were a balloon you would be able to see the outline of the balloon as the flame would ignite the air inside the balloon, giving us a good view of the shape and size of the balloon, if not the colors of he silk. We could see no shape of any balloon and there was no obvious basket below the object for holding the people who would be operating the balloon. He mentioned that he thought the light was flickering as a flame would.

Just as he said this the flame flickered out and disappeared. We waited, thinking that if it were a balloon, the operator would have to re-ignite the flame to keep the balloon from falling. There were no sounds of attempts to re-ignite the flame and there was no more light. We could not see anything falling to the ground, even at a slow rate given for the hot air of a balloon to cool, bringing the balloon down.

The sighting lasted about seven minutes. It was approximately 5:45pm, Wednesday, December 12, 2007, in the very Northwest corner of Washington State, about 30 minutes south of the Canadian border. There was a wispy cloud cover of about 1000 feet, but we couldn’t even see the diluted light of a flame going through the clouds.

We continued on our way with my son watching for a return of the light, while I drove. I arrived back home about 30 minutes later, not having see the light again.

Posted 2008-03-04