This has taken me all too long to post...
I spent a week in southern Missouri in mid-September.
The weather was beautiful and surprisingly cool
for the time of year.
My sister was driving her Suburban to pick up
my nephew from school around 3:30 in the afternoon and
the three of us were headed back to their
house. As a passenger in the vehicle, I was
able to look around freely and enjoy the scenery.
I was watching an approaching hill and I noticed a
puff of dust rising from the side of the road.
There seemed to be what may have been a large "clump" of dust
that did not dissipate... so I looked closer. Even though
it climbed higher into the sky and at a steady pace, it did NOT
dissipate as expected-- in fact it looked more like a white
VERY diffuse cloud rather than a puff of dust. I had time to
say "Oh, my God" three times before it was out of sight.
The oval-shaped cloud had risen to tree-level... past the
first set of trees and away behind more trees --
but it never rose any higher.
Because I was wide awake in the middle of the afternoon, my rational
brain kicked in -- how fast was it going? Who else saw it? Was
it really going with the wind? I noticed its size in relation
to the trees and looked closely for wings, tail or exhaust.
The object was pretty much between me and the sun -- so if it
had a solid mass, it should have appeared with a shadow
at the lower part -- but it didn't-- it was a misty white color.
By the time we got to the site at the top of the hill, the dust
was blowing across the road, but the "object" was no where to be seen.
The dust was clearly coming from the ditch at the side of the road,
but no obvious cause for "why" it got kicked up was visible.
Of all the times NOT to have my camera handy! The whole event took
about 15 seconds from first sighting to our reaching the area
where the dust was flying.
Putting it all together, the event looked like this:
there was a large automobile-sized, yet misty object sitting in
the ditch next to this major highway. It rose into
the air at a steady pace and climbed to tree-level, but no higher.
It traveled out of sight at that low level within 15 seconds or so.
The terrain being so hilly, it could have dipped out of sight at
almost any point-- but being at the top of the hill, it should have
been visible if it was a plane or helicopter climbing into the sky.
I was in shock -- and all 3 of us in the vehicle saw the dust cloud
but I was the only one who saw the object.
The next day, at the same time I took photos in the exact
area it occurred... follow the links to see my recreation of what I saw.
Here is a re-creation of what the object looked like:
http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a158/ ... bject2.jpg
The shape, size and color are exactly what I remember. (I did
the photos the very next day when it was still fresh in my mind!)
Here is the trajectory -- the solid lines cover the range
in which I actually saw the object. The dashed lines are
guesses based on how it was traveling:
http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a158/ ... bject1.jpg
Here is the area where the cloud of dust was rising from:
http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a158/ ... bject3.jpg
There is a house about 30 yards or so to the left, but its
driveway was nowhere near the ditch that was producing the dust.
Also, no farm machinery or animals in the field were visible.
OK -- it COULD have been co-incidence that a car had quickly
sped away from the ditch back onto the road and made the cloud.
The object COULD have been a low-flying plane in the distance that happened to be on the same trajectory and then became invisible in the
sunlight. But the timing of the two events was too coincidental.
Plus, being the foothills of the Ozarks, no pilot in their right
mind would fly that low in that terrain. (Plus the FAA would have
something to say about it!)
Even now, three weeks later the whole thing seems unreal.
Thoughts? Ideas? Questions?
TVgeek