2011-01-01 - Welches, OR - Sphere

8-9 extremely bright orange ball shaped objects traveling rapidly and silently in a straight line across night sky

At approximately 12:30 Jan 1, walking to our rooms after a New Year's Eve celebration at a Welches Oregon resort hotel, my husband and I and another couple (all sober 60ish retired public school teachers) stopped to admire the clear starlit sky.  After a minute or so, we saw what we at first thought to be some sort of fireworks or airplane--a very bright orange ball, much larger than an airplane or planet or satellite, at about a 50 degree angle traveling from a southeast direction and heading northwest across the sky.  But the orange ball didn't behave like a firework or airplane.  It traveled rapidly and silently across the sky and then faded out after 20 seconds or so.  Then just as it disappeared, we saw another identical object appear from the same direction.  As we continued to walk for the next 10 minutes, we saw eight or nine more of the orbs, sometimes two or three visible at one time, but spaced out along the same straight path. At one point we wal! ked by another woman who was also witnessing this phenomenon, and she expressed how she had never seen anything like this, either.  We aren't sure if this continued on, as we were cold and tired and headed into our rooms.

I later contacted the FSS and was told that the surface winds were very light, and winds at 500 millibars were southwesterly at 10 knots(at 4 am).