NUFORC Sighting 128474

Occurred: 2016-07-09 21:10 Local
Reported: 2016-07-13 10:37 Pacific
Duration: 5 minutes
No of observers: 3

Location: Oldsmar, FL, USA

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

An object that appeared to be on fire passed laterally over open water then rose rapidly into the sky.

We saw something in the sky we cannot explain. Started lower than a plane and was definitely on fire. Moved steadily across our field of view. Within minutes, it rose and ultimately went completely out of sight. Way too big and fast to be a paper lantern gone awry. And it moved up, not down, so also not a meteor or anything falling to Earth.

My 11 year old son saw it from the couch and pointed it out. I couldn't see it because of the glare of the inside lights. He ran to the slider and we went to the balcony. We live on the open water of Tampa Bay, so we have an unobstructed view of a large area of sky.

I yelled to my husband upstairs to look out the window in the sky. He came downstairs and by then it was already out of sight of our balcony, around the building, but still low. We all rushed downstairs and out the front door and by then it was already high enough to see over our 3 story building. Hubby was also puzzled and ran between the buildings to get a better look. By the time we got there it was really high. Within 5-10 seconds it had completely disappeared out of sight, moving away and up from us until it was too small to see it, totally gone.

It seemed slow passing the house but at the end it had to really be booking to disappear that quickly. It actually freaked son out quite a bit. His little heart was pounding. I posted on Facebook directly afterwards and someone recommended I put it on here.

Posted 2016-07-15