NUFORC Sighting 165873

Occurred: 2021-12-15 15:15 Local
Reported: 2021-12-15 01:00 Pacific
Duration: 2-3 seconds
No of observers: 1

Location: Syracuse, NY, USA
Location details: Airborne, East of the city if Syracuse from several thousand feet in the air to ground level.

Shape: Fireball
Characteristics: Lights on object, Aura or haze around object

“Fireball” of green light, vertically descending then rapidly leveling to fly horizontally and disappearing like a light switch snapped

I am an Air Traffic Controller working the overnight shift at a local airport. The night is extremely slow like any other as we typically stay open in case of emergencies, weather diverts, delayed arrivals or cargo planes. I was sitting kicked back in my chair and looking at an array of screens and equipment in front of me that are spanned out horizontally across a low sitting desk so I have a good field of view of the sky.

Its a clear night, visibility is well beyond our farthest reportable value of 10 miles. The lowest level of the trace clouds in the sky are 20,000 feet above the ground level. There are very few stars visible, and not a single airplane or even a radar blip of a moving object anywhere within 60 miles of me. These radars are accurate enough to often mistakenly pick up large birds momentarily, so there was surely nothing typical in our skies on this night.

Counting the minutes until my shifts end, gazing blankly across my desk and into the dark night, is when I saw what I have no other explanation for than a UFO. Like nothing I have ever seen before, what appeared to be one object with two vibrant glowing green lights in a fixed orientation next to each other appeared several thousand feet in the sky in a rapid downward trajectory. The object was definitely several miles away from my position based on my day to day observations looking out these same windows when there are dozens of airplanes in the area. But the size of the object being several miles away, appeared as large as an Airbus only a mile away, flying into the ground, lit up like a glowing green Christmas tree.

The object had appeared at what looked like several thousand feet above the ground, and within seconds it has descended to barely above my horizon view and a ridge line in the distance when it appeared to “pull up” like a modern aircraft would, but being its size and speed and trajectory, no modern aircraft would be able to pull up to a horizontal flight path that abruptly. Just as the object appeared to level, the lights vanished as instantly as any light would turn off from the flick of a switch.

I have never seen anything like this, there have been no signs or even a flicker of light anywhere in that area or the surrounding sky in hours… I have been spooked, chilled and at an uncomfortable loss of words since.

Posted 2021-12-19

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