NUFORC Sighting 144997

Occurred: 2018-01-17 19:00 Local
Reported: 2019-02-24 23:16 Pacific
Duration: sporadic 5 seconds severa
No of observers: 2

Location: Salton Sea, CA, USA

Shape: Fireball
Characteristics: Lights on object

Multiple fireballs, sonic booms and a craft.

A friend and I drove from Los Angeles area out to the Salton Sea area on 01/17/18. We were going out that way to shoot astro photography, so we had all our camera gear. On the way out when we were on highway 111 I believe, when we saw a group of fireballs in the sky. They illuminated one after another going in a line what seemed like 2 or 300 feet in the air. I think there were about five or six in the first cluster we saw. One would light up really bright just like a ball of fire, then as it was going out after 1 second or so the next would light up, so on and so forth. We were pretty astounded at the sight of them and couldn't figure out what it was. I was thinking some sort of oil pipe we couldn't see burning off fumes or something. We really had no idea. We kept driving another 30 minutes or so and arrived at the Salton sea area. We were in the Bombay beach ruins section. Soon after we arrived we saw another group of fireballs shoot through the sky. I set up my tripod and camera and started shooting continuously trying to capture the fireballs.

I have included the one picture I got in unedited format, edited, zoomed and highly contrasted. I hate it when I see ufo images that look fake or terrible. I wanted to include all the high res pics and zooms and what not.

Our night was already feeling pretty special from the fireballs when we heard a very low and loud sonic boom. We both looked at each other like "did you just hear that?" We kept shooting and over the night saw a couple more groups of fireballs and heard about 7 to 10 more sonic booms. All of this was seeming very strange. We decided to walk up to another part of the beach area. While we were in this area we saw two lights coming over the Salton sea towards us. It was very dark, the craft was silent. It was cigar shaped and had a green light on the front and a white light on the back. It was a couple hundred feet in the air and moved completely silently. Since it was so dark and it was moving I wasn't able to get an image other than the green and white lights. It looked and moved like a blimp, but we could not see it and the fact that it came after fireballs and sonic booms made it feel even stranger.

I don't know if there is a military base out there or what was going on. I'd love to hear if you've had more sightings out there of if any of this can be explained.

Posted 2019-02-27