Light over Fort Wayne, IN

The report, as filed

While leaving the Smokey Bones restaurant in Fort Wayne, Indiana, tonight (Friday, Sept. 18, 2015) around 9:10 p.m., I looked up at the sky after noticing sheet lightning in the NE and wondered if a thunderstorm was rolling in. As I turned around to get into the car, I saw three bright orange lights in a “V” formation and a fourth “straggler” slightly behind, moving slowly across the sky from the SW toward the NE. My husband was already in the car and I told him to get out and take a look. We both were watching the 4 lights, which seemed to disappear behind the thick cloud cover, but as we again turned to get into the car, there was another group of 4 orange lights, the first 3 in V-formation. This time the 4th one was much further behind, but they all were traveling SW to NE. Because our intention tonight was to get the grocery shopping done, we drove over to Meijer. As we parked the car in the Meijer lot, we could still the 4th “straggler” of the second group of orange lights and we stood in the parking lot watching until the light seemed to fade behind the clouds. My husband dismissed these orange lights as most likely “military.” But they were not your typical air plane lights. They were orange, with a slight yellow waver and were steady with no blinking. The speed at which they traveled was slower than a plane, but made me think of a glider. As far as I could tell, they made no sound. All I could hear was highway traffic and shopping center traffic. We saw these unusual lights flying in this formation above a busy outdoor shopping mall, with people coming and going from the theater and restaurants. I was looking around for someone else to look up or someone close enough that we could talk to and ask if they could see these lights too, but the people we saw were too far away and/or on their cell phones! What were these lights? Weather balloons? Drones? A group of eight people flying gliders at night? My husband and I both have Bachelor degrees, he in Computer Science and I in Liberal Arts (English Literature). I'm always looking at the sky and am knowledgable about the planets and stars, thanks to Stardate.org.

Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #122171). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.