2016-09-02 - Gulfport, MS - Triangle

Strange lights over large plum of smoke.

I was at dinner with my husband at a local Chilli's. It is off a major highway here, HW 49. On our way there, we saw a very large plum of smoke rising into the sky, like something massive was on fire. When we arrived I noticed it was still coming up from the ground, so I took a picture and sent it to my mother, asking if she had heard on the news of anything burning. She checked our local news website and found nothing, saying it might have been a controlled burn. When I looked at the picture I noticed a series of strange lights hovering over the smoke. Where we live there are no tall buildings, the tallest is 15 stories, and these lights were easily as high as some clouds. There is an airport close to this area, but behind where I am taking the picture from. The only thing in the area of the picture is a lot of woods and some small residential neighborhoods. The amount of smoke that was coming up looked like it must have been coming from a massive forest fire, or something similar, it certainly isn't what you would see with a house fire.

Having lived here my entire life, I have never witnessed airplanes flying this close together, some of these lights appear to be in a triangular formation, while others just contain two lights. There was also the absence of any blinking or red lights as most airplanes have. If you look at the photo and zoom in, to the left of the obvious bright series of lights, there are also some duller ones visible. I cannot readily explain what these are. Curiously there has still been no report of anything burning, or of controlled burns in our news.