NUFORC Sighting 122983

Occurred: 2015-10-20 01:05 Local
Reported: 2015-10-20 02:30 Pacific
Duration: 1 minute
No of observers: 1

Location: Tucson, AZ, USA

Shape: Light
Characteristics: Aircraft nearby

Red-orange lights being followed by helicopter

I was sitting in my house watching TV at 1:05am on Tuesday 10/20/15 in the outskirts of the SW Tucson, AZ area, when I heard a helicopter noise steadily growing even louder. As I am sitting next to the large picture window, I looked out between the blinds to see 2 small reddish-orange lights moving off to the west, followed by a helicopter with a red & green solid, non-blinking lights.

As they were approaching from the city center area of Tucson, I was able to see a dark shape around the red & green lights, showing the shape of the helicopter, with the city glow directly behind it, but I saw no dark shape around either of the small red-orange lights that would determine the approximate size or shape of the craft it was attached to. Also, the distance between the 2 red-orange lights was slightly larger than the distance between the 2nd red-orange light and the helicopter lights and the 2 red-orange lights were offset, with the first one slightly more north than the 2nd one, but the helicopter lights were in a straight line directly behind the 2nd red-orange light.

I distinctly heard one helicopter noise, not several. As the noise was louder than I can ever remember hearing at this location, as well as the fact that the green & red helicopter lights were large, I believe the helicopter was flying low in the sky as it went directly over my house.

I do live near a small airfield called Ryan Airfield, which is 2 to 3 miles southwest of my location, so I am used to seeing small prop planes and small helicopters flying over this area, but never that low or loud. These lights were not going towards Ryan Airfield to the SW, but almost directly west, maybe slightly north of directly west. I, on occasion, have also seen military planes and helicopters flying over this area, as we do have both an Air Force base and Air National Guard base located in Tucson, but they never fly this low, and usually are in groups of 3 or more. With these helicopter groups, it almost sounds like an echo from multiple rotors, but I didn't hear that echo on this occasion.

I wrote down the description of this occurrence immediately after it happened, so the details were fresh in my mind.

On a separate note, in the 9 years I have lived in this house, maybe 8-10 times I have heard a loud sonic boom type noise that rattled my house to the extent that on a few of these occasions, I ran outside to see if a car had run into my house. I used to write these sonic boom noises to military aircraft, but as I have heard reports of these noises on Coast to Coast AM, I am not so sure of that hypothesis, especially since I have never witnessed an aircraft to accompany these loud banging noises. Most of these booms happened during daylight, as several woke me up since I work graveyard shift and sleep usually from sunrise to early afternoon.

Posted 2015-10-29