NUFORC Sighting 35918

Occurred: 2003-11-08 18:30 Local
Reported: 2004-03-30 13:01 Pacific
Duration: seconds
No of observers: 2

Location: Phoenix, AZ, USA

Shape: Flash

"shooting star" below cloud layer

My wife and I were traveling south into central Phoenix on SR51, a freeway, to attend a sporting event, I was driving. Around the area of Cactus Rd. I noticed a "flash" in the upper part of the windshield, I believe there was a left to right motion to it, (east to west). As I leaned forward to see what had caused it, my wife said, "oh, it was a shooting star." I told her that I doubted that because Phoenix had a solid cloud layer all day, and I had never heard of a meteorite still incandscent 8,000 feet,(est.), above the ground, traveling in a horizontal path. (I work for a large aerospace company and am an amateur astronomer.) As I told her this, she replied that she had seen a similar "shooting star" about a week before in the area of New River, a town about 30 miles north of Phoenix. She said it occurred early in the evening, while it was still very light, and, again, had been an overcast day. She said the "shooting star" disappeared from view behind the mountains north of New River. The details stuck in my mind because November 8th was my birthday. I also investigated several websites dealing with meteorites and found that smaller ones are usually only traveling a few hundred kilometers per hour that low in the atmosphere. If it had been one large enough to be incandescent at that altitude, it should have made a large hole somewhere in west Phoenix, but there was no report of any such event the next day. I have debated with myself for months about submitting this report, but I am a regular visitor to this website, and as such, feel guilty about not reporting, if only to add this to a database.

Posted 2004-04-09