2000-03-09 - Mountain Home, AR - Fireball

Bright, white, golf ball sized orb hit a glass like dome above the planet - creating 45 sec. of white night light in our forest - followed by a gold, teardrop shaped fireball with blue trails following same track. Southwest sky at 11:00 position. Several aircraft in northeast sky flying southwest at the time. They, too should have see it.

My husband and I saw the fireballs March 9, 2000, at 10:09p.m. It lit up our forest brighter than daylight. A bright, white light held us and all the wildlife in silence for about 45 seconds. I was looking up (at the 11:00 position in the sky, toward the southwest) when the bright ball hit a glass like dome above the planet. The ball was about the size of a golf ball. It hurt my right eye; it was so bright. We stood in the white-light waiting for it to stop. When it did I quickly looked at my watch. It was 10:09p.m. We next saw several airplanes in the sky flying toward the southwest from the northeast. At 10:10p.m. a second ball was above us in the exact same path that the first had taken. It looked like a large meteor. It had a golden-red color and trails of blue flying from its sides. The second ball was not round. It had the long tail of a meteor; unlike the large white ball I saw the first time. The other strange thing to this is that at 10:00p.m. (before this all happened) my husband said to me that he thought we should go outside for a walk down our driveway (we live deep in the woods). I was already ready for bed but his tone of voice sounded strange - so I said OK. We stepped outside our house knowing that something was going to happen. We both joked that maybe he was being called by UFO's. Well, when the white light hit us, we didn't laugh. One more note - yesterday, March 22, 2000, when I mentioned this to someone, they said they had a friend who was out on the lake that night fishing, and he too, saw the fireballs. He was so frightned by the first long, white-night light that he thoutht it was the rapture (second coming of Christ). I have to admit that during the light-night(45 seconds long) I, too, thought it was the rapture or something else on a cosmic level. For the next few days we were often confused about what night it actually all happened. It was difficult for us to remember if it was Thursday or Wednesday. We thought that was strange. I had journaled it on Thursday. When the first fireball hit it revealed a glass like dome above the planet. Its white-light spread above the dome which than revealed a clear distinction from above the dome to below the dome. I was giving my husband a hug when it hit. He is a tall man so my head was looking up at the night sky - in the exact spot that it appeared when it hit. The flash hurt my right eye but not my left. We felt suspended in a sort of time warp as the light-night surrounded us. Everything was brighter than white, except the trees seemed to be shadows, yet they, too, were bright. It was just that the bright light was so bright that the trees seemed shadowed. There was no sound of anykind except my husband and I. We held each other and asked each other - what do ya think it is? The second fireball was the lenghth about 4". Typical teardrop shape. It followed in the same ark of the first, and it hit the same spot on the glass dome - but it did not make the dome. The dome was no longer there. That only lasted a few seconds while the first light was at is greatest intensity. The second fireball looked like a meteor. I often stay up late to watch the meteor showers in the fall. This one was not only 4" long, it was 1/2" wide in its front. Trails of blue light curled from its sides. It was the largest meteor I have ever seen. I hope all this informathion helps some how.