2013-02-26 - Columbia, MO - Fireball

Single large fireball traveling SSE with no decrease in altitude for two minutes before abruptly extinguishing

While digging my car out of a snowbank in my driveway with a neighbor, I was distracted by a light in the sky at 21:00 on February 26, 2013. I am an amateur astronomer and also a nurse at the local trauma hospital (University Hospital in Columbia MO), so I assumed that the light was a "Life Flight" helicopter en route to the hospital (3.5 miles SSE of my house).

However, when I looked up, there was no helicopter... and the UFO was completely silent. The UFO was a fireball, best described as an intensely orange light (seemingly lit from within) with flame-like orange light emanating from the center without consuming it. The speed of the craft was less than the speed of a helicopter, and despite the "fire," there was no decrease in altitude.

The UFO traveled fairly low ( the clouds were low and the UFO traveled below or at the cloud cover) in a south/southeast direction.

After approximately two minutes, the UFO seemed to "extinguish" abruptly and faded from sight with no decrease in altitude. I remarked to my friend several times that there was no sound at all from the UFO; the night was very quiet and I could only hear the traffic from I-70, one mile south of us. I asked her to take a photo with her cell, but she was so disturbed by the UFO that she ran into her house carrying the snow shovel.

In my approximately 40 years of sky-watching, I have never seen anything resembling a UFO ... and certainly nothing resembling a slowly-moving fireball that burns without consuming itself or losing altitude or making a sound.

Thank you for your time, expertise, and dedicated work.