THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, July 25, 1994 TAG: 9407250068
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEVE STONE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium: 61 lines
Motorists saw them. People standing in their yards saw them. A commercial airline pilot saw one, a police officer saw one, and boaters up and down the mid-Atlantic coast saw them.
Their common description: ``A fireball.''
Some folks were left wondering if pieces of the comet that pummeled Jupiter were hurtling their way toward Earth.
What really caused the unscheduled celestial show remained unclear late Sunday - the popular theory was meteors - but there's no doubt something was up there.
Reports came in over a three-hour period starting at 4:50 p.m. from people throughout Virginia Beach.
Scores of residents called police and area newsrooms with basically the same descriptions: A streak in the sky that ended with a ``pop'' or an explosion and left a trail of smoke in its wake.
``It caught my eye, it was so bright,'' said Sandra Harris, who said she saw one of the fireballs. ``I looked up and it was just there and it seemed to explode at the last minute. There was a line of smoke behind it like you see behind a jet, but it was gray, not white.''
She described the fireball as reddish-orange. But other sightings came with different colors, including streaks of greenish-blue.
``My husband says it's stuff from the comets hitting Jupiter,'' Harris said.
Authorities were mystified. The Navy said it didn't know what it could be. The National Weather Service had no idea either.
At Norfolk International Airport, air-traffic controllers said there were no reports of any aircraft incidents to account for the phenomena.
``But some controllers saw something in the sky; some sort of fireball,'' said airport spokesman Wayne Shank. ``It's unusual. But apparently it's nothing serious.''
Shanks said controllers received several calls, ``including one from a commercial pilot in the area who also reported seeing a fireball in the sky.''
The commercial pilot thought ``it might possibly have been a meteor,'' Shanks said.
If so, the chunks from space apparently were penetrating much deeper into the atmosphere than normal.
Many people described seeing flames trailing the objects.
The most reports of sightings came about 8:40 p.m., and they were not limited to Virginia Beach.
``We've had calls from Cape May, N.J., all the way to Cape Hatteras,'' said Lt. Cmdr. Phillip Johnson of the Coast Guard's 5th District Operations Center in Portsmouth.
He said Coast Guard offices up and down the coast in those areas had received calls, mostly from boaters, reporting the streaks in the sky. And the colors varied.
``Everything from white to red to green,'' Johnson said, ``and lasting a while in the sky as it broke up.'' by CNB