NUFORC Sighting 74942

Occurred: 2010-04-08 22:40 Local
Reported: 2010-04-09 10:01 Pacific
Duration: 10 minutes
No of observers: 3

Location: Brady, WA, USA

Shape: Light
Characteristics: Lights on object

A very bright maneuvering light moving at a high rate of speed at low level with no noise near Brady, Washington.

Approximately 22:40 in the evening of 8 April 2010 I was driving west at about 65 miles per hour on highway 12 from Elma, Washington, to Aberdeen, Washington. I was accompanied by two friends (A women in the back seat and a man in the front seat.

We were just beginning to emerge from a hail storm when a very bright, white light came into view in the upper right of my windshield moving westerly at a very high rate of speed. I knew immediately that it wasn’t any kind of conventional aircraft. As I looked at the light I asked my friend, "What the hell is that?!" Looking at it, my friend replied, "I don’t know."

I am a private pilot and have logged more than a thousand hours in small single engine aircraft. The first thing I noticed was the lack of navigation lights on it. The light was less than 1500 feet above ground because it was flying lower than the clouds that produced the hail storm. I estimated these clouds to be around fifteen hundred feet and the light to be about a thousand feet above ground level. It was also less than half a mile to our right. So it was very close when I first saw it. I figure it was moving at several hundred miles per hour. Probably around mach 1. Yet there was no noise. The ball of light seemed to be the same size as a small single engine aircraft. But it was so bright it is really hard to say with accuracy.

It made a slightly ascending ten degree right turn then turned back to the left about fifteen degrees and leveled off at about fifteen hundred feet above ground level. In less than a minute, it was already quite a distance away, perhaps as much as ten or fifteen miles. It seemed to slow down as it approached Aberdeen. Since we were traveling in the same direction, it remained in sight for maybe as long as ten minutes as we moved toward Aberdeen. It in fact seemed to be hovering over Aberdeen at one point. But it is hard to tell from that distance whether it was over Aberdeen and whether it was still moving slowly or hovering.

As we emerged from the hail storm the sky became partly cloudy and the stars came out. Even being several miles away it was much brighter than the stars. As we approached about five miles out of Aberdeen the light finally disappeared from view.

NUFORC Note:

We spoke via telephone with this witness, and he seemed to us to be an exceptionally competent witness. We have invited him to obtain data regarding the height of the bottoms of the clouds, to establish the maximum possible altitude of the object. PD

Posted 2010-04-13