2005-08-06 - Coalinga, CA - Triangle

080605, Coalinga, Flying over I5, Brightly lit Wedge shaped ufo separates into 3 objects (yellow, red, white).

Short Version: Thin Wedge shaped flying object (side view) with very bright white light crossed low over Northbound I5 near Coalinga, CA. At first we thought it was an airplane on fire about to crash. After crossing over I5, object hovered over the fields next to Southbound I5. At closer observation object had two round bright white lights. Object separated into 3 objects, each with two bright round white lights. 1 object changed color to yellow lights. One object changed color to red lights. Yellow lights flew back over I5 to fly over the fields next to Northbound I5. Objects were flying over the fields to either side of I5. Observers in car kept driving and eventually lost sight of objects behind them.

Detailed Version: What driver saw: Driving north on I5, having passed the stockyards on the right side of North I5 and maybe 5 minutes further (doing 70-80 mph). Near Exit 33 (Coalinga). Driver saw a very bright white object flying very fast from the right side of the sky. She said she knew it wasn’t natural, because it was a clear dark starry night, and it was too low for an airplane. She said it was a very bright white light. She said as it crossed over all lanes of I5 (from right to left) a half mile in front of the car, she could see in profile that it was a thin wedge shaped object that was so bright she thought it was an airplane on fire, about to crash. But it crossed over all lanes of I5 and hovered over the empty fields to the left of us, next to Southbound I5. Her impression was that it was about the size of a jet.

What I saw (Passenger): The driver had just seen a bright white object fly low across all lanes of I5 and then stabilize, hovering above the fields to the left of us. I missed this because I had my eyes closed, resting.

She said, “What was that !” and I opened my eyes to look.

I looked across the highway ahead and to our left. What I saw looked like two round bright white lights (bright like halogen lights) at about the height of a medium sized radio tower (Note – I did not see any tower). My friend, on the drivers side, had a better view, and she described it as super bright and was illuminating the field below it - bright and white as a search-light. She said she could see the leaves of the vegetation in the brightness of the light.

She asked me again what I thought it was in the field on our left.

The shape of the object appeared to me like two horizontally aligned round lights close together, as if connected or mounted near each other but not touching. I saw the bright lights but did not see that they were attached to anything (I have poor night vision and was wearing old eyeglasses). It was too dark for me to see anything in profile, all I saw was lights. I said, “Its just a radio tower" (I had NOT been looking ahead and had not seen the object flying across I5 in front of us). She insisted I was wrong, that it had flown there and was hovering, and asked me to look again. So I twisted in my seat to watch it as we passed.

At first as I stared at the bright horizontal dual-lights they were stationary in the air. Then suddenly, they tilted in the air to slant downwards at an angle (30 degrees). As I watched, a second dual-light object slid out from behind the first one (at the same angle), so that now there were two, and then a third slid into view so now there were 3 distinctly separate dual-light objects. They paused, then object3 oriented back to horizontal and flew to the right and up, away from the other two. At the same time, Objects 1 and 2 separated further from each other. It was VERY Dark, I5 has no lights. I kept my eyes on object3 so as not to lose sight of it. Suddenly, with a bright Flash, object3’s lights changed from Bright white to Bright yellow. In the peripheral of my vision I could see that another of the objects changed from white to Red at the same time. I believe the original object 1 stayed white. I confirmed this later with my friend who was driving – she had taken a glance at the object(s) as it separated and changed colors.

This all happened very quickly (maybe 10 seconds from separation to color change).

Objects moved smoothly (not in jerks) and flew smoothly while I observerd, clearly fast but did not move at jet speeds, more like fast helicopter speeds. The driver said she thought they where a little higher than an overpass, which is consistent with my observation that they were about the height of a medium sized radio tower.

The Yellow object now started to fly across I5 again, passing overhead. I looked up through the glass sunroof as object3 (the Yellow lights) passed overhead. I did not see any “shape” of an aircraft – just the yellow lights (but I was wearing my old eyeglasses). I also did not hear any aircraft engines or noise – and even though the car windows were closed, I think I would have heard jet engines or helicopter blades at the height it passed over us, if it was that sort of craft. The yellow lights (object3) hovered over the empty fields to our right, as our car drew further ahead of it. Object3 must have been also flying parallel to our direction, because it maintained its distance behind us, moving around a bit over the fields, and we were not leaving it behind as quickly as if it had been stationary. This spooked both of us, and we drove faster. It was perhaps a minute before we finally lost sight of it behind us (which is a long time when you’re doing 70-80 mph). I finally lost sight of it when it started to cross over I5 again. I twisted around in my seat to look across I5 to the fields on the left of us, looking for the other objects. I briefly saw a bright white lighted object on the side of I5 south, then lost sight of it in the dark behind us.

I looked at the time, it was 9:18 pm (pst). I estimate the duration of our sighting was from 3 to 5 minutes.

There were no headlights of traffic behind us (there had been at the start).

I am assuming other drivers slowed down or stopped to watch.

We were too spooked to stop. Traffic on Southbound lanes of I5 was becoming heavy and slowing down – I suspect due to people slowing down as well, to watch this phenomena.