Fireball over Anacortes, WA
A witness account on file, unevaluated. Most of the archive rests here, and honestly so.
The report, as filed
Date: 12-06-18 Time: 11:00pm pac. (+/- a couple minutes) Location: The north entrance of Deception Pass Bridge, HWY 20, between Anacortes and Oak Harbor WA, USA. The event started in the south south-east sky and went further east as it descended. I was traveling in a southerly direction at the time. Witness: Myself, traveling in my car alone on my usual commute home from work. I was traveling at 40 mph with cruise control on. As soon as I got home, I posted a brief of my sighting on Facebook. When I got to work on the 7th, I told many co-workers about it. One, who saw my FB posting and was off work at the time said he saw it too. Another, who was at work and traveling home about the same time, said he saw it as well. Event: I saw a very bright flash of white light (similar to a lightening flash on a clear dark night) to my left. It lit up the entire half of the sky. I turned to it immediately and looked through the forward half of my driver's side window. I saw what I can best describe as a classical comet. It was a large white ball, followed by a very long and tapering white tail. If I was able to freeze it in position, and trace its outline with a marker on my window, the ball was the size of a nickel and the tail was between 8-10”. It was descending toward the ground at an extremely steep angle, about 10-15 degrees shy of 90 (straight down). In terms of overall length, it took up roughly 30 degrees of sky. The entire event, from beginning to end lasted no more than about 2 seconds. It is possible that it might have been slightly longer, because there is a large rock wall just to the left of the road at that position, so it could have blocked the view of it until I rounded the corner approaching the bridge. We spoke via telephone with the witness, and found him to be sincere and sober-minded. We suspect he is an excellent, and highly reliable, witness. PD
Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #144002). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.
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Routed to: Federal Aviation Administration · records window 2018-12-03 → 2018-12-20
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