Fireball over Nevada Highway 375, 10 miles E of US Hwy 6, NV

The report, as filed

A few minutes after we turned off of US Highway 6 onto Nevada Highway 375, (on our 6-hour trip from Mammoth Lakes, CA to St. George, UT), my daughter and I saw on the left side of the highway a line of four, equally spaced, white lights along a line parallel to the highway inclined by about 10 degrees above horizontal. The lights were fairly dim, and we thought they might be streetlights along a parallel road on a nearby ridge, but we could not see any terrain around us to confirm this. Only what our headlights lit up was visible, and all else was black except for these lights because it was a moonless and starless night, although visibility was unlimited at ground level. As we passed the lights on our left, they seemed to be about as far apart from each other as their distance from the road, and it took a minute or two to travel from the closest point to one light to the closest point to the next light. We were driving about 65 MPH, so the lights were a mile or two apart from each other, and about the same distance from the highway. Because they were inclined at about 10 degrees, they were probably between 900 and 1800 feet above the elevation of the highway. As we were neared the closest point on the highway to the fourth and final light, all four lights suddenly lit up very brightly in four different colors, brilliant red, blue, green, and amber. They flew up, down, and sideways, and looped around each other. One light shot out a vivid green beam of light. We stopped our car to get out and look at the spectacle. I saw the closest light, which was a very bright amber ball of light, drop down to ground level and start flying right at us. In about 30 seconds, it stopped only a few hundred yards from us between 100 to 200 feet above the ground. I heard no noise. I could not see any structure to the object, just a very bright light that lit up several acres of ground under it. I could see rocks and scrubby desert bushes or trees under it. My daughter who had been driving panicked and screamed at me to get back in the car as she jumped back in behind the wheel. As soon as I climbed back in next to her and shut my door, she sped away from the lights down the highway. We were fearful that the lights might follow us, but none of them did.

Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #174158). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.