2014-01-15 - Mountain Brook, AL - Light

Pulsing light hovering, stationary and moving slowly over busy rush hour traffic - NOT a helicopter.

I just left work and was stopped at the intersection of 280 and Office Park Drive. I was perhaps 2 or 3 cars from the light, waiting on the light to change. Across 280 I saw what I first assumed was an aircraft moving slowly through the sky…until it stopped moving. At that point I assumed it was a helicopter, but it moved back in the opposite direction, stopped, then moved forward again. It was hovering back and forth in a way that is strange, even for a helicopter. It had a light that pulsed, changed from red to green, (did not blink in a familiar, aircraft pattern). The pulsing was random. There may have been a white light as well. All lights were tightly clustered together.

I could not discern a shape. Just the lights, but I was parked at the traffic light for a good 45 seconds to 1 minute watching it hover above the trees across the busy road (someone else had to have seen it - it was rush hour).

When traffic began to move, I pulled off of the road and looked back so I could continue to observe it, which I did for another minute or so. It slowly began to descend below the tree line where I lost sight of it. Total time observing: approximately 1.5- 2 minutes.

My theory is that it was some sort of robotic drone that an engineering student may have been testing from an empty parking lot in Mountain Brook Office Park. That’s the only “rational” explanation that makes any sense to me at this point.

I tend to have a critical eye and I do not jump to conclusions. But this was exciting because-whatever it was–it is the first of its kind I've ever seen.