2016-05-21 - San Diego, CA - Formation

Formation of 12 steady white lights floats from west to east, slowly ascending, over Mission Valley, San Diego.

While starting to drive my car away from a party at 9:45 pm, Saturday, May 21, in the Mission Hills area of San Diego, I saw what was like a constellation of bright white stars, maybe about 12, in the area clear of trees above the street, towards the west. I thought to myself, "What’s Cassiopeia doing there, and the Big Dipper, too low in the sky and in the wrong direction."

I pulled my car over and got out, and saw that the lights were slowly moving from west to east. Seeing them in motion was quite a shock. Not planes, not helicopters, just steady bright white lights floating slowly to the north of where I was, from west to east.

I ran back to the house and told everyone to come out to see what was happening. The 15 or so still there came outside onto the driveway and sidewalk to watch the show. The lights seemed to be drifting, slightly changing position in relation with one another. They seemed to be slowly ascending as they moved east they neared the posi! tion of the full Moon, which had risen about an hour or two earlier. They gradually faded from sight. A retired policeman was among the witnesses.

Our guess on the most mundane side was that they could have been balloons with attached lights, launched from Ocean/Mission/or Pacific Beach and were riding the nightly onshore breeze which was taking them to the east, directly over Mission Bay then Mission Valley to our north.

I later went to Ocean Beach and asked fishermen on the north side of the pier if they had see balloons launched from the long stretch of these three above beaches to the north, but none had seen anything. I recall seeing in the news a similar report of floating lights a year or two ago, also in San Diego.

I was just visiting in San Diego for the weekend, from Minneapolis, for my brother’s memorial service.