Sphere over Tacoma, WA

The report, as filed

On the evening of June 12, 2016, I was sitting in the living room of my aunt & uncle's house, talking to my cousin. I was facing a large bay window and through it I saw what I thought was a plane. It was heading south, towards us, and had 3 blinking lights. Two on the left (when facing us) and one on the right. These lights blinked 2 then 1, 2 then 1, left then right, left then right. As it got closer I couldn't make out its shape so I asked my cousin, "What's that?" He thought it might be a helicopter. To check if it was a helicopter I went outside to see if I could hear it. I could not. By now the craft was overhead and west of us. It was essentially flying over the Narrows Bridge along the course southward over the Puget Sound. This is when I took out my iPhone and shot about 35 seconds of footage. It was now 7:42 pm. I stopped filming because some trees would soon obscure my view. So I went in the backyard to continue watching it. I asked my uncle what it was. He didn't know. I asked if it could be a helicopter, but he said it was too high. It was definitely very high and flying at a constant velocity on a flat trajectory. I asked my uncle if he had binoculars. He went inside and grabbed a pair while I continued watching it. I pointed out the object to my aunt and 8 year-old son, too. None of us knew what it was. The object continued moving southward and was soon nearly too small to see. When my uncle returned with the binoculars I was only able to find the object in my sight once before losing it again. The sun was lowering and bright enough to where I needed to block it with my hand. It made finding the object at a distance challenging. The object then became too faint at such a distance and I lost it. The whole event must've lasted approximately 10 or so minutes. Maybe 15. A review of the National Weather service showed that at 7:53pm in that vicinity the wind direction was NNE and velocity of the wind was 5mph.

Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #127874). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.