NUFORC Sighting 18391

Occurred: 2001-07-12 02:30 Local
Reported: 2001-07-12 00:00 Pacific
Duration: 10 seconds
No of observers: 0

Location: Ruidoso (Bonita Lake), NM, USA

Shape: Flash
Characteristics: Left a trail

Flash of Light, followed by a orange fireball

I was out camping at Bonita Lake with my family. I could not sleep so I got up and look at the clock and it was 02:30. I walked outside to the campfire to have a smoke. Earlier that evening there were thunderstorms, but the skies were clear at the time of the sighting. After about ten minutes a flash lit up the campground as if it was daylight, I look up and saw what appeared to be a shooting star with a long tail behind it moving Northeast. It was not as fast as your normal shooting star, because if I had actually seen a flash from a real shooting star against the ground, by the time I look up the star would have already been gone. The whole sighting lasted approximately 7 seconds. About 2-3 minutes later I heard one single boom. Then I knew for sure it was not a shooting star because I had heard what appeared to be an explosion. Earlier that evening, my family and I were watching lightening flashes and counting the seconds after the flash. I told my son I believe for every second the lightening is a mile away. If this is true than the explosion had to be between 120-180 miles away. I looked on the CNN website today to see if we had lost any satellites, but there were none. My brother had asked me how high I thought the object was, the only thing I could tell him is it appeared to be much lower than a shooting star. There were no running lights and the object turned into a orange fireball with a tail of 1/3 of the skies length.

Posted 2001-08-05

© 2023 National UFO Reporting Center. All rights reserved. Use or reproduction within any application without written consent is prohibited.