2012-07-08 - Oakland, CA - Circle

4 Orange lights seen over Oakland, CA - Interesting maneuvers and disappearance. First time sighting!

I was driving northwest on I-580 between Park blvd. and Lakeshore Ave. While exiting onto Lakeshore, I saw 4 very bright orange lights in the sky to the west, heading southeast toward me. My first reaction was that they were a string of planes on their way to land, which is a common sight in the bay area. They were below the cloud cover, which is relatively low (touches the hilltops), but I couldn’t see any sort of shape to them. A fourth that was hanging back abruptly caught up, bobbing ad looping as it went.

At this point I had run through all the options. Based on their speed, I am convinced they were “aircraft“, but they were making turns and altitude changes that appeared unearthly. They started to turn to the east rather quickly, at which point I couldn’t look anymore, considering I was driving. After finding a parking spot, I ran out of the car and looked up, only to find one craft slowly moving west to east. As it sat in the sky, I got a good look at it: Orange orb with yellow edges, no apparent solid shape. It was larger than Jupiter in the night sky, but definitely smaller than the moon. It jogged around for a second then seemed to go straight up, fading out through the cloud layers.

I saw two men talking where I had stopped, and when they separated I pulled one over to look at what I was seeing. He was somewhat interested, but figured it was a helicopter and walked back inside his home. Well, after what I saw, I can safely rule out helicopters, airplanes, or anything inanimate like "Chinese lanterns". These things were moving all over the place in their flight path, and were at times going faster than the F-18's that were flying over for the 4th of July. It was surreal to see the way they moved, it is difficult to put into words.

I never thought I would see something like this over my home town.