SIGHTING: WASHOUGAL (NEAREST), WA

Witness Testimony

"During a 3 secs I saw a 12ft diam, onion-shapd object ~2miles away, going ~400mph. Bright orange lightDate: Thursday, Nov 17, 2011 at 3 pm Subject: November 15, 2011 Sightings of two UFOs To: ufocenter.com To: UFO Center Re: Sighting of Two UFOs at about 7:40 pm pacific time Location: From home located at far west end of Skamania County; a Second seen about a minute later was in east Clark County Address: XXX Huckins-Buhman Road, Washougal, WA 98671 I was outside at about 7:30 pm pacific time on Nov. 15, 2011. I looked into a clear north sky. My location was about 30 miles south of Mt. St Helens. My elevation was about 500 ft above sea level. The skies are relatively free of light-pollution from Portland, OR, Portland is about 45 line-of-sight miles away.At about 7:40 pm I was gazing intently to the north sky and at the instant of sighting I thought I was seeing a meteor. In the next instant I could see the object was fairly close to me and at a distance close to the earth. It could have been 2,000 to 3,000 feet high, traveling west-to-east and in the distance only about 1-2 miles away. My head was raised only about 15-20 degrees to place it in the center of my personal viewing window.The shape was best described as a modern fishing bobber. I thought first to describe it as an onion, sis kabob or giant child’s toy--a top. But its symmetry and aerodynamic shape made the fishing bobber or onion pretty good descriptors. The front had a large diameter, perhaps about the diameter of an executive jet—10-12 ft. The diameter of the object decreased gradually if one were to measure from the maximum diameter at the front and then moving toward the rear of the object, the diameter gradually decreased to a dimension of a foot or less. However, there was also a long cylindrical rod which looked to be a foot in diameter, or somewhat less; the rod extended from the front of the object by about 5 or 6 ft, passed symmetrically through the entire body of the object and extended about 10 feet beyond the end of the bobber-shaped part.The bobber-shaped part was a bright pumpkin orange It looked like the entire object was engulfed in an orange flame. The flame did NOT burn as a liquid fuel with flames extending---there was a flame but more like the metal of the skin was on fire or just orange-hot.The speed was subsonic-probably 400-500 mph. I watched it in clear sky for about 2-3 seconds; then it sped into fir trees at a higher altitude on the hill; the trees are about 150 ft high. But as I watched, it appeared in a second "window" through the trees for an instant and then out of sight. Its trajectory appeared very much in accordance Newtonian laws of motion-just a gravity-controlled descent with no obvious deviations---which might have been caused, says, by steering. All is very quiet here and I listened intently to hear a crash; I heard no sound.The country-side is familiar to me. I would say that it impacted on a flat-topped hill, called Bear Prairie which is north of me; the point of impact would have been about 2-3 miles from me. To give you a latitude and longitude, I would say it crashed near the north end of a short road, called Bear Prairie Road and at its end and intersection with Skye Road. These places should be easily identifiable on a good map of this area. If my estimates are way off, it might have traveled as far as the valley of the North Fork of the Washougal River, Bob’s Mountain, but certainly not beyond Silver Star Mountain (5,000 ft in elevation) and about 20 miles away.This appears to have been the routine death of a satellite or other man-made object falling from orbit. The only really curious thing was that about half a minute later I saw a 2nd orange-glowing object which was traveling at about the same speed, but it was 6-7 miles away to the west of me. It was traveling in pretty much the opposite direction---from the east to the southwest toward the hills that rise up north and above downtown Washougal or Camas. Or if it was traveling in the gap in the hills which rise to the north of both towns, it might have landed in one of the cities, the Columbia River or in Northeastern Portland, perhaps even as far as the Portland airport.Probably not a very exciting entry into your log of UFO sightings, but interesting for the record and probably of interest to the Air Force that probably likes to keep track of where satellites that fall to earth. "