VALADY (12) 08.11.2015

On 8 November 2015 between 23:00 and 00:10, 2 people in Valady (12) saw several yellow-orange lights follow one another silently across the sky and disappear aloft. GEIPAN considers orange balls crossing the sky in a few minutes on a weekend night strongly suggestive of sky lanterns, probably released nearby after a private celebration. The reported south-to-north movement fits the light southeasterly wind recorded at Rodez, 15 km away; see Météociel. In this hilly terrain, low-level air currents follow valleys more than the prevailing wind. The gendarmerie inquiry reported no aircraft-radar anomaly in the area on the reporting day from the detection and control center named Saint-Mars-la-Pile (37) in the source. The Air Force's COSMOS military space-object monitoring center likewise found no trace of a phenomenon in its data. One witness clearly described the regular, successive ascent of this series of small hot-air balloons. GEIPAN classifies the case as B: very probable observation of sky lanterns.