NUFORC Sighting 16196

Occurred: 2000-07-25 21:30 Local
Reported: 2001-02-05 00:00 Pacific
Duration: 15-20 minutes
No of observers: 3

Location: Las Vegas, NV, USA

Shape: Light
Characteristics: Lights on object, Aircraft nearby

Las Vegas Lights

I didn't know of your existence until I just heard you on Art Bell's show on the night of his return to radio ...in fact, you are still on the air. I had never seen anything interesting in the night sky until the night of July 25, 2000. After this event I immediately typed up what I saw and sent a fax right off to Mike Seigal at Coast to Coast AM. As far as I know he never covered it ...and I don't know of anyone but the 3 of us who were present who saw this event. However, I thought you might like to add it to your records and perhaps someone else has sent an account of it to you as well. Here is the text that I typed: Attn: Mike It is now 10:25 pm (July 25, 2000) Pacific. I live in Las Vegas, Nevada and just less than an hour ago I was on the very south end of the valley looking north towards the Stratosphere Tower (a distance of 10-15 miles if I had to guess) ...showing a guest of mine from the East Coast a nice view of the Strip from a high elevation. There were three of us present and we noticed extremely bright glowing lights at approximately the level of the Tower, but well beyond it. You could see the lights of aircraft crossing the Las Vegas Valley, but these lights were 20-30 times brighter and stationary with a slight drift to the right (East). One of these lights dropped suddenly to the valley floor and disappeared. After several minutes the others flickered and faded as well. As soon as they were gone another set appeared at a much higher elevation ...in relation to the tower, almost twice as high. These kept fading after about five minutes and reappearing in sets of two and three ...only a single time was there only one light in the sky. I called a local television station, KLAS channel 8 and asked them if anyone else had reported this ...they said no, but said they'd train their stationary cameras on it (in retrospect, I don't think they took what I was saying seriously). All the while the Vegas.com blimp, a tourist airship here in Las Vegas was in the sky and provided a good point of reference. They took off from the North Las Vegas airport, about 25 miles from where I was in the valley, but they were much smaller (the airship is lit from the interior and the size of the Goodyear Blimp) in relation to the size and brightness of the lights. The best analogy I can draw is to the Phoenix Lights incident of '97 that I've seen time and again on TV. Unfortunately I didn't have a camera, but this incident was far and away more interesting than the Phoenix one. I understand that some explanations there include military flares, and this could have been what I witnessed. However, some of the lights dropped all the way to the! Valley floor and I wouldn't have expected that to happen if military excercises were being conducted on the Nellis Range over the other side of the mountain range in the north part of the Valley. However, as I mentioned, these lights did not all descend in elevation ...what one would expect if they were flares attached to parachutes. I hope that someone captured this on video ...there must have been many eyewitnesses, including those in the blimp, in the airport tower, and elsewhere. I'm also curious if this will be discussed on the 11 o'clock news, but as I finish typing this it is now only 10:35 and being a listener from time to time of your show I thought that you might enjoy this bit of information. Please feel free to contact me. Best Regards, ((deleted)) XXXXXXX 702-XXX-XXXX

Posted 2001-02-18