2000-01-29 - Seatac, WA - Fireball

Fireball streaking in southeast direction, looked at first like a gigantic meteorite burning up in the atmosphere.

I was traveling south on I-5 between SeaTac airport and the city of SeaTac (can't remember exact location) en route to Olympia. I saw a large white ball of light slowly descending southeast of my position. My first thought was that it was some sort of a meteorite, because it seemed to be streaking slowly down toward the horizon. Then it seemed to travel in a southeast direction and the "tail" got smaller and smaller. Some trees momentarily blocked my view, and when I could again see the patch of sky where it had been, it was gone. It wasn't a vapor trail from an airplane, and it was moving so slowly that I assumed it was something in the upper atmosphere. My second thought was space junk burning up in the atmosphere, but I did see the space junk that burned up in the atmosphere a year or two ago, and it looked very different (space junk looked "sparkly", versus just a solid patch of light like my sighting). My next thought was that it was a meteorite, and I really expected to see it continue falling to the ground followed by a big explosion (actually picked up my cell phone to let my husband know my location should it touchdown). Two nights later there was a segment on Q13 news about some UFO sightings in China. They showed some of the Chinese newscast images of their UFOs, which looked very much like what I saw, only their were moving horizontally, while mine appeared to be moving vertically. Sent an email to the news to ask them if anyone else had reported a sighting after seeing their report, but got no response.