Appearance / Description of Object(s)

Large glowing orangish object with vapour trail, about as bright as a stadium light and traveling left to right over pavement.

Size of Object(s)

Object was approximately 30-50 feet across.

Distance to Object(s) & Altitude

Object was approximately half mile from us, about 30 feet from the ground.

Description of Area / Surroundings

The area was rural motorway with heavy snow on the ground, trees, small hills and as far as I know, no military bases or power plants. Conditions of weather were light snow, heavy overcast clouds and no sun.

Full Description & Details

On Dec 31sth, 1978, my fiance and I were making a road trip from Manchester to Wales by way of Liverpool, to see Conway Castle and Colwyn Bay. Upon returning, the weather became snowy and we were told by motorway police that the M-56 would be shut down soon, and my fiance insisted we could travel the snowy road since we had a front wheel drive car. About a half hour before the Runcorn exit, we stopped to take a picture of a stone bridge and the snow, I still have a Polaroid of the bridge. While stopped, we noticed a large orange ball-shaped object traveling over the motorway, from left to right and leaving a wispy vapour trail in its wake. It took about 5 minutes to travel across the pavement and then It disappeared behind a large hill. We were stopped while we observed this,and then got back into the car to see what the object was. We travelled down the road, and saw no further trace of it. There was no sound and no other cars on the motorway since the weather was so bad. At the time, there was light snow but the clouds were very close and it was heavily overcast. We agreed to not say anything about the sighting for fear of ridicule, but upon arriving in Shaw, a village outside of Mancheter, to my fiance's parent's house, we observed a televsion report about the sighting, and the following day, a report from Runcorn where a boy had described a large ball-shaped object landing in his father's field, leaving scorch marks amidst the snowy field.

The same type of object had been reported by an Austrailian airline pilot the week prior and film taken of it, and the follwing days after our sighting, the object was reported in several other cities in the UK.

Can sighting be explained as any conventional man-made or natural object?

No sun, no blue sky, no weather balloons etc. I don't believe there was any 'man-made' craft that would apply. I'm from a military family and have never seen anything like this.

Witness Background

Military family, college graduate, world traveled.

Views on UFOs, before and after sighting

I've never believed in UFO's prior to this and still do not read UFO sites, but someone advised I should report on this sight, my observations.

Other Comments

I've made a compsite picture of the object for purposes of demonstration or my sighting.

Reported Sighting? 

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