2001-03-23 - Blythe, CA - Fireball

Meteor-like fireballs near Blythe California on the night the Mir Space Station plummeted back to earth

On the night the Mir space station was crashing back to earth, I was driving West on I10 from Phoenix to Los Angeles with a friend. Right as I passed the California/Arizona border I noticed what looked to be three glowing lights in the sky, just above the horizon. I commented about them to my friend because unlike aircraft lights these were glowing an orange color, were much larger, and appeared to be motionless, like they were hanging there. At that point they did not look like fireballs. I thought they could be tower lights but they were much too high, the wrong colors, and there were no towers around. We passed behind some hills and lost site of them, and basically forgot about them. About fifteen minutes later we were in an open stretch of the desert when I saw the lights again streaking parallel to the highway but far off and very high. Rather than lights I could see more clearly there were several huge white-orange fireballs streaking across the sky at high speed, just like meteors but seemingly much bigger. They were so clear and vivid (no clouds, haze, fog) not to mention bizarre, we pulled off to the road to watch them. Several would streak across the sky, then another couple more would come, then several more and so on all following the same "path." Again these fireballs were huge. They streaked from east to west, directly to the glow from the city of Palm Springs (which was hidden behind a mountain). What was especially memorable was that while some streaked by with meteor-like trails behind them, those already in the distance appeared to hang motionless in the sky (quite possibly because of our angle of vision). The fireballs did not appear to have a manufactured shape, like a saucer, have any visible manufactured elements such as lights, or move in a controlled fashion across multiple planes; they simply streaked. Then it suddenly occurred to me: this must be the Mir re-entering the earth's atmosphere. I knew the station was supposed to come in over Argentina but no one knew exactly where it would go. It looked just like a body entering earth's atmosphere and breaking up. I did question some elements at the time though, because the fireballs seemed very large, much bigger then pieces from the Mir, but then again I don't know anything about the Mir. The other question my friend and I discussed while watching this display was why it had been going on for a good 25+ minutes. If the Mir came in I would expect it to be more or less one "clump" of little fireballs. In the distance, the exact direction the fireballs were traveling, they seemed to arc down toward the earth, like they were falling gradually. Then there were large flashes where they appeared to fall. Seeing the arcs and flashes (which looked like lightening in clouds far off in the distance) I thought the "Mir" was breaking up and hitting the earth, although the flashes seemed surprisingly large. Although it sounds absurd now, I actually thought the LA area was being hit with "debris." After the display ended we kept driving west. I turned on the radio near Palm Springs only to hear that at the Mir re-entry was not due for another 45 minutes and indeed it was coming in over Argentina.