Posted on 11/29/2017 12:54:55 AM PST by Swordmaker
Something VERY strange occurred tonight while my girlfriend and I were soaking in our spa in the backyard about 9:45 PM. We live in the unincorporated area between Sacramento and Rancho Cordova, CA.
It was a very cool and clear night and we could, for the first time in a long while see the stars clearly. We turned off the security lights that illuminated the walkway along the garage and enjoyed to clear stars as we lay back and enjoyed a glass of brandy in the spa. Air temperature was about 46º F but the water temperature was a toasty 100º. Winds were only 4 mph. Nice.
Orion was very clear in the South East and I was scanning the sky when I saw a meteor streak in the Eastern sky about 15º-20º NW of Orion between four tall palm trees (separated in two groups of two) in our neighbor's yard. I told my girlfriend about it and she turned to look but missed seeing it. Just then, to more very bright meteors came in the same area, essentially coming from the East and heading generally West.
As I watched, four more meteors of various brightness flashed across the sky in that area, generally angling from about the same area of sky and burnt out. Then, very quickly about seven or eight more, also of various brightness, some as bright as magnitude 1. . . some as low as 5 or 6. All streaking straight as an arrow, all seeming to come from the same small area of the sky, all from an area seemingly way far above and obscured behind the palms. This was highly unusual.
None of the meteors lasted for more than a few seconds before burning out but brightnesses were all over the place. Pretty quickly we were seeing dozens of meteors. . . sometimes up to ten of fifteen in the space of ten seconds, going in a cone shape all from the same small area in the sky, coming down in droves. Sometimes there were a dozen in a second! All straight line of trajectory! Some longer flight than others, the brighter, the longer. You could see bright flashes through the palm fronds as well. I have never in my life seen so many meteors in such a short span of time.
I called my daughter who lived about fifteen miles East me so she and her husband could go look at the "meteor shower." I also called my primary client down in Stockton to do the same.
BOTH reported they saw nothing at all! Strange. If these were meteors, they should have been visible over a wide area.
What my girlfriend and I were seeing HAD to be a local phenomenon!
The meteor shower lasted a good ten minutes and then petered out. . .
My girlfriend had dashed inside to get my iPhone so we could try to take photos and videos but it was fruitless. She'd also put on a robe so she could try to get some photos with out the palms blocking the sky. The sky was too dark for the size of the lens on the phone to give us good pictures. Some still photos show the trees, but the meteors were pretty much gone by then.
A local meteor shower was already pretty weird, but THEN it got really even weirder.
The PALM TREES started magically twinkling and flashes of light started joyfully diving in and out of the palm fronds. These flashes were not any where nearly as bright as the "meteors" high in the sky had been, but were more like somewhat dimmed white/blue Christmas tree lights. They'd flash on, circle around the tree, diving in and out, flash a bit brighter, then go out. Some lights inside the tree would flash making a glow behind the fronds for a second or two as the light reflected off the fronds, and then go out. There'd be several more of these interior glowing globe like lights around inside the fronds. . . they'd last a second or so and then wink out. Sometimes one of the zooming lights would flash through the tree, and the flash would become a moving globe light, then come out the other side, to wink out in mid flight, or fly in, stop, then wink out.
This had all the appearances of birds or insects of some kind finding places to land and rest for the night, settling in and getting comfortable. This took about ten minutes as the activity slowly settled, the lights dimmed further and further, even in the darting around, and the twinkling died down.
During all of this my girlfriend and I heard not a sound. Nothing. No flapping of wings, no chirping, no singing. Nothing. It was totally quiet. Nor, could we see anything in the light that look like a bird or anything else, just light. These trees are perhaps 60-75 feet away, and perhaps 75 feet tall.
The photos show the trees, but I was never able to get one of the flashes. One four minute video get some faint flashes. . . and an aircraft in the back sky flying and flashing which I hoped would disturb whatever had alit in the trees. Nope, did not bother them.
Various theories were essayed by those we talked to:
Too bad, so sad.
Any other viable theories?
I am east in Reno. All we have are aircraft, a bit late for some.
Unknown weather phenomenon.
Nothing logically connected, st Elmo’s Fire pops to mind fir the trees.
Any idea what the current geomagnetic disturbance is?
I’ve heard tell of bizarre visual ground effects during certain geomag storms.
As for the sky disturbance, couldn’t tell you.
But in sci-fi thinking, you’re now infected with nanoparticle machines and the sparkling was visual artifacting of your vusual center being reformatted and scanned.
(I really should try to write some more.)
Too much booze?
http://spaceweather.com/
http://fireballs.ndc.nasa.gov/
There may be an earthquake in your area soon too, weird sparkles associated with piezoelectric effects prior to a tremor.
That is indeed a weird story. I’m from Citrus Heights myself. We always knew Rancho Cordova was a weird place. ;)
Were the new Apple IPhones being thrown by frustrated users?
Drone dispersing smallpox or other bioweapons in droplets of liquid which evaporated and became lighter on the way down.
Perhaps a long burst of neutrinos from an unknown source was aimed right at your eyeballs.
I’ve seen pixie dust sparkles like that before, but it was during a bizarre and rapid cold snap that dropped the outside temperature from above freezing to -10 in the space of about four hours. The humidity crystalized out of the air and fell to the ground like glitter. Very striking, I would have enjoyed it if I hadn’t been walking without a heavy coat, hat or gloves because I hadn’t paid attention to the weather forecast and my car wouldn’t start. At the time I thought I was hallucinating due to being hypothermic. Several other bizarre things occurred, such as horns blowing in unoccupied cars. Evidently there’s an explanation for that too, relating to the rapid, extreme drop in temperature.
What an experience!
Did the Gaydar go off?
Gaydar probably goes haywire in the Bay Area, kind of like trying to use a magnetic compass at the North Pole.
Ack!
Oh yeah, I’d forgotten about that.
Thanks
“fifteen miles east.. BOTH reported they saw nothing at all! Strange. If these were meteors, they should have been visible over a wide area.”
Depends, the event may have been “behind” them to their point of view or off to the right.
And if it was test rockets being range detonated, we will never hear about it, it would be at lower altitude than meteor streaks, and a distance of fifteen miles would vastly change the viewing direction in that case.
I had not noticed the lobed nature of the "meteors" until I blew this photo up. . . but now I can see that there is a distinct tri-lobed pattern in the tail that may be caused by the flapping of wings obscuring the light of whatever is causing the streaming tail.
There were a lot more before we got the camera out. . . sometimes the trees were just covered with lights. Same on the right. Note the Blue White color.
To get these photos to show at all—they were completely black to the eye—I brought them into the Apple Preview App and used the Tools and pushed the "Exposure" control to the MAX and then brought the "Shadow" control up. I also increased "Sharpness" in each of them.
This may give you an idea of what they looked like before processing. This is the worst of them and I was unable to get anything from this one, which was supposed to have some of the "meteors" on it, rats:
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