Fireball over Springfield, MO

The report, as filed

I am a retired teacher living in Springfield, Missouri. I was watering my garden about 10:15 this evening. I was not wearing a watch, but the weather news (Channel 3 KYTV broadcasts 10:35 PM - 11:37 PM) had just started when I went inside to tell my husband what I had seen. While I have been writing this report, midnight has come and gone so this is Thursday, July 21, 2016, and it covers an event which occurred on Wednesday, July 20. The sky was clear and I could see some stars. I was facing east when I caught a glimpse of a very large object over my left shoulder. It appeared to be moving through the sky in a straight line from SW to NE and disappeared from view behind tree tops in my neighbor’s yard. It took about five seconds to cover less than a 90 degree portion of the sky. There is a full moon, tonight. I know that the moon seems larger near the horizon than it does at the zenith, so it is difficult to compare the size of what I saw to the size of the moon – but the object was gigantic, more like the moon than anything else in the sky – exactly the size of a nearby street light, and as bright. I do not mean that it illuminated the ground, but that it appeared as bright as the street light I could see at the same time. The object was yellow with a tinge of red, and looked like a flame without any sparks or smoke. It was nearly round, tapering just a little toward the back end, but it had no tail, left no trail. It did not blink or change its intensity. It was silent. Our local meteorologist says that, at that time, the wind was from the south at 8 miles per hour.

Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #128617). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.