As reported

Fireball over Helena, AL

A witness account on file, unevaluated. Most of the archive rests here, and honestly so.

The report, as filed

Eight adults witness fast-moving bright object fly across the sky

Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center. Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.

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Routed to: Federal Aviation Administration · records window 2001-06-20 → 2001-07-07

From the same sky

Related entries

September 13, 2018 · 11:32 PM · LIGHT

Helena, AL

While sitting on my back porch last night, I observed what may have been ball lightning but I’m not sure. There were thunderstorms in the area with vivid lightning, but no active storms in the immediate area. It was 75 degrees F, humid with a light breeze and mostly cloudy. Facing west at 8:32pm, seated and speaking on the phone, I observed a ball of light that was whitish-blue ascend diagonally about 20 degrees above the horizon. It appeared to level off slightly before changing to a pinkish-bluish-purple color as it arced back toward the ground to the point where my view was obstructed. The event lasted 5 to 6 seconds. There were no sounds heard during the event or right after it occurred. When the ball of light first appeared, it seemed to ascend, arcing toward the east/southeast. When it leveled off briefly, it seemed to travel toward the east. When the light descended, it appeared to arc toward the northeast. The brightness of the light seemed to get slightly brighter as it traveled, which makes me think it was moving closer to my position. The ball of light looked like a roman candle type of light. No sparks were emitted from it like what happens as meteorites travel through the atmosphere.

September 15, 2017 · 7:00 PM · CIRCLE

Helena, AL

I was outside in my backyard at dusk and suddenly saw a single bright light in the sky. It appeared as though it was an airplane flying overhead toward me. The light was there for about 5 seconds and then it just disappeared. It was as if it went into a cloud, however it was a clear evening and there were no clouds in the sky. I kept looking for the “plane” for a couple of minutes, but never saw it again.

July 14, 2014 · 7:40 PM · LIGHT

Helena, AL

This evening my wife and I were with our 20 month old daughter in our backyard so my daughter could play in her baby pool. I looked up to see any aircraft visable as we are about 100 miles west of ATL and we usually have good air traffic overhead. I noticed a light that would be similar to the brightness of Venus directly overhead, but at about 85 degrees, slightly to the west. I asked my wife if she could see it and she said that she did. No other lights were visable in the sky and 30 minutes later in the same spot where we witnessed this, there are still no other lights in the sky, including and stars or planets. The light was stationary as far as we could tell. At one point I picked up my daughter and leaned her back and asked her if she could see it. She pointed to the light. After 10 minutes, the sun had set over the horizon or behind clouds to the northwest. The light was no longer there but my wife said that she could still see it. I could not but as I tried, two aircraft in the area allowed my eyes to focus back on the object. At that moment my wife said that there were now 3 objects. I noticed that the main object appeared doughnut shaped and the other two appeared as smaller dots. To me it looked like one of the dots shot out of the larger doughnut. After only about a minute of looking at this strange cluster of objects, they disappeared. These objects were far higher than the altitude of the commercial airplane traffic that was in the area. The weather conditions at the time were 85 degrees F, humidity 59 percent, wind south at 1 MPH with a visibility of ten miles. The sky was and still is partly cloudy with showers off to our northwest about 20 miles away. One last detail... For some reason last night, I was out after dusk and had an uncommon urge to look up at the sky as if I was looking for something out of the ordinary. I don't look for strange things but last night I just felt the need to and then tonight we saw something strange. Interesting.

June 4, 2013 · 5:35 PM · FORMATION