GIANT GREEN FIREBALL SEEN BY THOUSANDS IN THE USA'S UPPER MIDWEST
UFO ROUNDUP Volume 4 Number 31 November 25, 1999 Editor: Joseph Trainor Masinaigan@aol.com

Shortly after 7 p.m. on Tuesday, November 16, 1999, a giant luminous green fireball flew from west to east across the states of the USA's Upper Midwest region, startling thousnads of eyewitnesses.

"A little after 6 p.m. (Central time) Tuesday, a bright light--most reported it as green--streaked across the eastern sky of the Chicago (Illinois) area for about 5 to 10 seconds and abruptly broke into a cascade of particles, causing a variety of reactions among viewers ranging from cosmically cool to panic-stricken."

"Don Troiani, an astronomer at the Cernan Earth and Space Center at Triton College in River Grove, Ill. was convinced that the light was caused by 'space debris' rather than a meteor shower."

"Shane Crone, the Adler Planetarium's observatory operator and sky show operator, agreed, saying the reported bright green color made him doubt it was a meteor. More likely, he said, it was a satellite."

"But then again, he said, 'It's hard to say.'"

"Joe Petersen of Island Lake, who was driving eastbound on Illinois Highway 176 when he saw the light, said he felt it was a plane crash." (See the Chicago Tribune for November 17, 1999, "Tuesday's spectacle of light a source of color, confusion" by Marla Donato and Aaner Madhani.)

In Indiana, UFO Roundup correspondent Steve Wilson Sr., who lives in Avon, Ind., received phone calls from 25 witnesses who reported "a very large fireball that flew over the south side of Indianapolis at around 7 p.m. (Eastern time)."

Police switchboards in Columbus, Ohio "were swamped by callers who mistook what might have been a meteor for a flaming aircraft."

"'The average person won't see any that large in a lifetime,' said Bob Hollinshead, operations coordinator for the airport. 'We initially got calls from people who thought it may have been an aircraft breaking apart in the sky."

(Editor's Comment: Obviously Mr. Hollinshead hasn't been reading recent issues of UFO Roundup.)

"The fireball streaked across the sky from west to east about 7 p.m., stunning stargazers as far away as Kentucky who were awaiting the arrival of the Leonid meteor shower."

"The fireball lasted for twenty seconds before disappearing over the horizon."

"'It was gorgeous,' said Tom Burns, director of the Perkins Observatory in Delaware, Ohio."

"Samuel Guess and Tiffany Parker had just placed an order at the Kentucky Fried Chicken (fast-food restaurant) at Cleveland and Oakland Park avenues when the fireball streaked by."

"'It was big and it was really long. That's how we knew it wasn't an airplane,' Guess said."

"It was moving really fast and then it disappeared,' Parker said."

"Gerald Newsom, an Ohio State University astronomy professor, said he believes the fireball was either a piece of an asteroid or a satellite entering the atmosphere...At 7 p.m., when the fireball took to the sky, the (Leonid) meteors were on the other side of the Earth, he said." (See the Columbus, Ohio Dispatch for November 17, 1999, "Fireball stuns stargazers, 'average' folks" by Roger Alford.)

At 7:03 p.m., eyewitness O. Kinsbury was driving through New Philadelphia, Ohio, "just north of the Stone Creek exit," when he saw "a light train moving across my field of vision from west to east about 20 degrees above the road."

Further south, in Cincinnati, "If you happened to glance at the sky shortly after 7 p.m., you may have thought you were getting a piece of tonight's meteor shower."

"Many callers to police described seeing a green ball of fire with a fragmented tail in the sky for about 15 seconds."

"But two Tristate astronomical experts said the green glow that was reportedly seen from Kentucky to Wisconsin wasn't part of the Leonid meteor shower due to arrive late tonight. Instead, it was probably a dead man-made satellite reentering Earth's atmosphere."

"'It's definitely not a meteor,' said Paul D. Mohr, an astronomer with the Cincinnati Observatory, who did not witness the light show. 'According to the descriptions, it sounds like it was a satellite.'"

"Rick Marra of West Chester (Ohio) was driving north on Snider Drive in Symmes Township Tuesday when he saw the fragmented object about 7:04 p.m. 'My wife kept saying, 'Rick, stop looking up--stay on the road,''he said, 'Whatever it was, it was huge.'" (See the Cincinnati, Ohio Enquirer for November 17, 1999, page 1.)

(Editor's Note: Symmes Township is named for John Cleve Symmes, an early exponent of the Hollow Earth theory. Remind me to tell you about the Fortean phenomena in that town sometime.)

At 7:04 p.m., Pamela Z. and her husband were "walking on the University of Cincinnati campus with 20 other people. We all stood and watched for what seemed like minutes. It was an enormous, Titanic-like aircraft. It was like a fireball with greenish exhaust behind. It was quite spectacular. It moved slowly from west to east, over the horizon. The triangular shape was apparent and circled with white/yellow lights. People saw red and green as well."

In Kentucky, a Cincinnati resident "while traveling northbound on Interstate Highway I-75 in Florence, Ky., he and his wife observed two rows of lights (shortly after 7 p.m.) traveling in formation." The formation, he added, "was way too wide to be an airplane." (Many thanks to Pamela Z., Kenneth Young of Cincinnati UFO Research, Stig Agermose and Steve Wingate of Skywatch International for their reports.)