Yesterday morning at 5:40 am while driving to work I saw a big fireball shoot across the sky headed northward towards Northern New Jersey or New York City. It was a red/yellow fireball with a white tail that appeared suddenly, shot across the sky for a second or two, and then disappeared.
My first reaction was awe. After a moment I braced myself for the mushroom cloud about to rise up ahead of me (9/11 hangover, I suppose). After that didn’t happen, I went back to awe.
I’ve seen fighter jets overhead so I’m certain it wasn’t that. And I’m reasonably certain that it wasn’t a crashing UFO. So, I have to believe it was some kind of space rock. It was unexpected and quite spectacular.
My area was recently visited by a small rock that crashed into a house in Holmdel a nearby town to my own.
I’ve reported it to the American Meteorological Society which tracks such things on their Fireball Sightings Log.
It was actually in Wales that I had my most vivid experience with fighter jets. Some friends who live in Cheltenham drove us to an old Abbey or Priory near Wye, I believe. We were up on a hill with some kine and all of a sudden there was a massive sonic boom and one jet followed by another flew overhead very close to the hills. I nearly crapped my pants. The kine were unperturbed.
Apparently there is an RAF base nearby that does practice runs over these hills.
In Wales a common problem can be looking skywards to find a plane you can hear only to notice it zoom past below you, following the line of a valley…
I’ve been riding home from work along the ridge of the Malvern Hills when a Chinook, a large double-rotored helicopter, suddenly crested the ridge very low and directly over my head; the splitting crack-crack-crack noise of the rotors was absurdly loud, like a machine gun being fired next to your ears. It zoomed over my head then descended down the other side of the hills.
Indeed it is, I’ve many times seen groups of three fighter jets in the valleys of wales, maybe a 100ft off the ground (and the mountains go up to 3000ft). Also I’ve bveen ‘buzzed’ by a rescue helicopter while on crib goch, I think they were just bored.
Same thing happened to me last time I was at the top of Llyn Y Fan Fach.
Two jet fighters screamed by at eye level so close I could wave to the pilots.
ITB: That impressive photo prompted me to look around a map of that bit of Wales, and there are now a whole load of new entries on my “places to go” list, thank you!
I don’t have to. My home and work are within a couple miles of Moffet Field where huge carrier planes pass overhead a couple times daily. They don’t make so much of a noise as do the fighter jets that pass through once in a while. The windows in my office rattle every time they scream past. Luckily, they only fly in during daylight hours, so we can sleep peacefully at night.
On the plus side, it’s like having an air show every week… sometimes several jets fly by in formation, landing in tight groups or doing sequences of turns in unison. Nifty!
I live half way up the side of a valley in the suburbs of Nottingham. I heard a distinctive engine noise - just like on a hundred post WW2 adventure films - and looked out of the window in time to see a Dakota (DC3?) fly over the houses nearby then bank to the left and fly past my window. It was that low that I could see into the cockpit, past the pilot and out the other side, and I could see the houses opposite, above the fuselage of the plane!
That meant the plane was flying in a residential area at about 200 feet, if that.
Fantastic noise, amazing sight, but incredibly irresponsible of someone.
There’s a lot of WW2 enthusiasts that would have paid good money to see that. There aren’t many DC3s flying today. They’re most famous for dropping the airborne divisions over Normandy on D-Day.
Apparently I’m not crazy. At least not on this account.
"Congratulations on your rare fireball sighting! We appreciate
you taking the time to report this object to the American
Meteor Society. Your summarized report may now be
viewed on the AMS webpage at: http://www.amsmeteors.org/fireball/fireball_log2007.html
Your event is #113e for 2007. So far there are 8 other reports
of this same object. I also invite you to check the table again in
a few days to see if any other witnesses of your event have
been posted.
rock my nerves anda rattle my brains, enough to drive a man insane
GOODNESS GRACIOUS GREAT BALLS O FIRE!
and on the spirit of low flying aircraft. i love going to airshows. there is an awesome one down on the ohio river in indiana where the blue angels always show up. god those guys have balls. they do high speed passes over the river flying in formation/upside down and incredible arieal maneuvers. amazing
