2014-05-12 - Comptche, CA - Rectangle

At 10:40 my dog started barking at a sudden low, loud thuderous sound. I thought earthquake, and then realized, no, that was the sound of a huge "jet". I have heard this sound on many winter nights during intense storms, multiple times at night (when we usually have no aircraft flight patterns.) It is intensely loud, like thunder, and very slow (the sound can last maybe seven minutes!) I have always assumed it was jets avoiding storm damage by flying at lower altitudes, combined with some effect of the clouds that increases the sound vibration, length and level of jet propulsion noise. When I realized this was the same sound, I was very excited to finally see what was causing it! It was a beautiful starry night,cloudless, even warm for our area at 65! I couldn't spot anything off the back deck (southfacing), so I headed for the front porch. Headed almost perfectly north was "the jet". Only, this jet was made up of four white points o! f light at each of its four corners! Yes, four corners! These light were steady (not blinking). I have never seen a square 737 before! It was traveling "slowly", ahh, slower than a commercial plane, at about the cruising height of Cal-star. In it's center was a pulsating red light that looked perfectly "airplane" like and rhythmic, except of course, that it was pulsing from in the middle of a very large, very slow-moving square. It was, as I have already mentioned, very, very loud, but in no way similar to the sound of a helicopter which has a "choppy" thunking quality to it. It was not silent, like a drone. It was deep in tone, steady, and gigantic sounding. It brought to mind aircraft carriers at sea, only flying overhead! It dissappeared at our nearby tree-line, though its sound lingered after I could no longer see it.

We live in the rural pacific north-west, sixteen miles inland from the coast. There are no other sounds at night out here besides crickets, frogs and the occassional owl.