NUFORC Sighting 180487

Occurred: 2024-02-18 11:30 Local
Reported: 2024-02-18 20:28 Pacific
Duration: 2-3 minutes
No of observers: 2

Location: Raleigh, NC, USA
Location details: We were driving north on NC-540 (35.8900439, -78.8164229) and it hovered directly over the highway.

Shape: Unknown
Color: Dark and solid
Estimated Size: A truck? Hard to tell!
Viewed From: Land
Direction from Viewer: North
Angle of Elevation: 90
Closest Distance: 200-250 ft (directly above us as we passed under)
Estimated Speed: Larger one was stationary; smaller moved 50-70 mph
Characteristics: Emitted other objects, Aircraft nearby

Driving north on NC-540, we noticed a dark object hovering over highway. We saw a second smaller object pass through or behind it.

My son and I were driving north on NC-540 heading to a soccer game at around 11:30 AM. We drive this route often and I am used to seeing aircraft take off from and land at RDU airport near this spot of the highway. As I watched a plane take off from RDU heading northwest from several miles away, a much smaller dark object hovering in the sky caught my eye because it was between us and the plane. At first I assumed it was a large bird (they are common in our area) but then as we got closer, it seemed to be much larger than a bird, perhaps the size of a truck. I then thought it was a cluster of black balloons that were tied together. But it was stationary, hovering roughly 200-250 feet directly over the highway without drifting. We steadily approached it driving 70 mph and eventually reached directly underneath it. My son used his phone to capture video as both of us watched a second smaller object (same color--dark and solid) approach the larger hovering object. The small object appeared to either go through the larger object or go behind it. This occurred just a few seconds before we passed directly underneath it, at which point my son tried to capture it by moving his phone camera to look through our car's moon roof, and we could see we were still passing directly beneath it. That was the end of our sighting as we could not safely stop, nor could we make a detour to find it because we were running late to his soccer game. As we continued on NC-540 toward our destination (WRAL Soccer Complex on the northeast side of Raleigh), we saw a large helicopter, which looked military to me, heading away from Raleigh in the direction of I-95/Wilson.

Posted 2024-03-13