NUFORC Sighting 17066

Occurred: 2001-03-30 23:00 Local
Reported: 2001-03-31 00:00 Pacific
Duration: couple hours
No of observers: 2

Location: Cloudcroft (outside of), NM, USA

Shape: Light
Characteristics: Aura or haze around object, Emitted beams

White beams that shot high into the sky and a bright red glow that seemed to be coming from behind a mountain.

A friend and I were on our way back o Las Cruces, NM. I noticed a red glow out of my passenger window. We were a little bit out of Cloudcroft, NM and it was about 11:00 pm. There was a red glow that appeared to coming from behind a mountain and covered a good portion of the sky. I kind of looked like there was a big forest fire. We pulled over once then drove a little more to get a better view and pulled over again. The red was more intense in one area and seemed to lighten out, the further it went out to the edges. There were also white beams of light the shot very high into the sky, almost to the point where they were over my head. They beams were not extremely bright but stretched a ways into the sky. There was also a time where there was 3 or 4 beams and then to the right of these, a could more appeared. They just started appearing in succession from left to right. Every once in a while they would fade away they in a while they would come back again. They never moved across the sky though, they would appear in different places but they were always stationary. Another weird thing was that when their were about 4 or so in a row, they were all space the same distane apart. Then after a little while, the red was gone but the beams of light were still there. There were two other cars pulled over at the same spot that we were but I didn't talk to them so I don't know if they were looking at the light or not. But we couldn't have been the only ones to see this, it was hard to miss if you just looked in that direction at the sky. There are nothing but a few very small towns in that area, and I have never seen any type of spot light that can make a beam of light like the ones that we saw It is the wierdest thing that I have ever seen. I regret that we had no video camera or anything with us. Well, I guess that is it, it happened about 4 hours ago, and I had to document it somewhere.

((BEGIN COPIED REPORT))

Subject: Interplanetary shock wave strikes Earth's magnetosphere, auroras could follow
Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 21:13:32 -0600
From: "SpaceWeather.com"
To: "SpaceWeather.com"

Space Weather News for March 31, 2001
http://www.spaceweather.com

A relatively dense and strongly magnetized interplanetary shock wave hit Earth's magnetosphere at ~0100 GMT on March 31st (8 p.m. EST on March 30th). Strong geomagnetic activity, including mid-latitude auroras, are likely to follow.

Visit http://www.SpaceWeather.com for details and updates.
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((END COPIED REPORT))

NUFORC Note:

Many reports of this phenomenon from Utah, Idaho, Oregon, Arizona, and Texas. We suspect the Aurora Borrealis may have been the cause. We provide below an official NASA report from a popular website, dedicated to the subject of "space weather." We find it interesting that the aurora was reported as being distinctly red. The ones we have witnessed, and the ones reported to us traditionally are blue, green, or some light pastel color in the blue-green portion of the visible spectrum. PD

Posted 2001-04-01