Fireball over Lynchburg, VA

The report, as filed

My wife and I had just dropped off my roommate's girlfriend and when we drove up to the stop sign we both witnessed what appeared at first to be a very, very bright constellation in the sky. My first initial thought was, wow a constellation - but this only lasted a millisecond because these were no stars for sure. There were 5-7 objects, bright, round, with a definite orange/red glow to them. They were obviously very far away from us and I could't guess at their altitude quite honestly. I want to say the best way to think of these would be to imagine seeing the constellation Orion in the sky, but the stars were bright and orange. Of course it wasn't this exact shape but there were something like two lights, left to right, then below another two, and then on the bottom of the formation at least two more. They were headed west, southwest and we were basically at Timberlake (the lake, not the city) Virginia. I looked at a map and I'd guess the lights would be somewhere close to Smith Mt. Lake or between that and us. We sat there in the car watching them and I was really flustered and didn't know what to look for. Had this been a regular occurrence I would have paid more attention to the details. I can say that there was some movement among the individual objects, but very slight. We watched them for at least five minutes. They kind of just faded away one by one and there was a large cloud formation they seemed to get lost behind. My wife and I drove in the general direction as best as the roads would allow but we never did see them again. Definitely a very intense few minutes and I only wish I could see them again. Oh, the color would be exactly what you would expect from a hot air balloon come to think of it, that fiery red/orange flame color.

Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #109674). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.