NUFORC Sighting 172551

Occurred: 1995-06-01 23:00 Local
Reported: 2022-10-25 13:19 Pacific
Duration: 5 minutes
No of observers: 1

Location: Potomac, MD, USA
Location details: Near David W. Taylor Model Basin in Potomac, MD visible from Clara Barton Parkway

Shape: Egg
Characteristics: Lights on object, Animals reacted

Craft of unknown origins hovering about the Model Basin

When I was 16 or 17, so 1994 to 1995, I was driving home late at night along the Clara Barton parkway. I was heading towards Potomac from Bethesda or NW DC, and it was nearing my curfew, so somewhere after 11 and before midnight, I believe. As I came out from the underpass (495 crosses over the parkway near here), the Model Basin came into view, as normal. What was not normal: a silvery, blimp or more accurately, burger? chipwich? shaped thing was hovering over the Basin. It appeared to be lit from within, or rather, that it had a luminescence about it. I can't recall any blinking lights, though I recall it had sort of a nubbly shape along the edges, which maybe were lights. It was very large, and terrified teenaged me. I floored it, trying to create as much space as possible between this....craft...and myself. It was super big in the rearview mirror, and it was quiet. I heard nothing, not even the usual chirping crickets or tree frogs that infest the forests along the parkway. As I sped (I drove a thunderbird, and I floored it, I was waaaaay over the speed limit), I anxiously watched it continue to hover.

I know what blimps look like. I know what a lot of jets, ships, planes, fighters, etc look like. I grew up here, and you see a lot of stuff. This was nothing commercial, and wasn't a weather balloon or blimp, though it hovered similarly. It didn't resemble any space shuttle or stealth jet I've seen. It was just...totally foreign to my mind. It's feasible it was some other country's spy tech, but the silence confused me-I still can recall that detail 25 years later.

The next day or so later, I was talking to a friend about it while we got coffee. A woman approached me and stated she'd spotted it as well, and called it in (not sure who she called, but she reported it) and was informed it was a weather balloon. She said it was not a weather balloon, her brother worked as a meteorologist and she knew what they looked like. To date, this is the only person I've ever encountered who saw it, and I've never seen any other references to it aside from my own posts here and there.

Date is approximate as there was no internet site to log this stuff on back then. I am 100% sure it was prior to 1997, and based on the car I was driving, it would place it between Jan 10, 1994 to August 1995.

Posted 2022-12-22