Canada reported unidentified aerial event — 1979-01-31 — Yale, BC

At 17:20 on 31 January 1979, the Hope RCMP received a call from a man in Yale, British Columbia, who said he had seen a ball of fire in the sky approximately ten minutes earlier. The occurrence report records that he saw nothing before or after it and heard no aircraft or other noise. He could place it only behind, or north of, Yale. There was no reported ground fire or recovered object. Police contacted Air Sea Rescue at 17:25 to check for overdue aircraft. No such information was available. A later call, after checks with Vancouver air traffic control, likewise produced no associated incident. One suggestion was an aircraft landing light switching on or sunlight briefly reflecting from an aircraft. Separately, a constable who had also seen something in the sky thought it was probably a meteor or similar phenomenon. When contacted, the original observer described only a flash of white light and agreed that a meteor was possible. He was satisfied with the response. The file was concluded and marked as a possible meteor, rather than as a confirmed extraterrestrial sighting or aircraft crash. That tentative conclusion should retain its wording: the surviving report contains no trajectory analysis proving a particular meteor. The illustration shows a brief sky flash over the Yale area with a representative observer, without adding a saucer, occupants, fire on the ground or a prolonged close encounter absent from the actual record.