Something in the sky over Greeley

Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird ... no, it's a comet ... no, it's a big balloon! No, it's ... what is that thing, anyway?

Whatever it was, the thing floated in the Wednesday night skies over Greeley -- quietly, white, lighted.

A UFO in the Greeley skies.

Several people were out between 10 -11:30 p.m. Wednesday night, and saw the aircraft. Most described it as a large balloon of some type, with lights attached.

Robin Gochenour, who lives in the St. Michael's area, near 65th Avenue and U.S. 34 Bypass in southwest Greeley, saw it about 11 p.m.. "It looked like a large, white hot air balloon with lights on it," Gochenour said.

Damon Freeman of Greeley said he saw the balloon -- if that's what it was -- about 10 p.m. "It floated directly from the south and came over our house, so I could see it easily. It looked like a tall teardrop-shaped balloon."

Jim Krause of Greeley said he saw what appeared to be a teardrop-shaped balloon with a strobe light and red light. He said there weren't any gas burners on the object as a hot air balloon would have.

At the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, spokesman Carl Burroughs said "I can almost guarantee it wasn't a weather balloon. We didn't have any up Wednesday night."

Burroughs said that the weather balloons launch twice a day, at 4 a.m. and 4 p.m., and they are retrieved soon after launch.

If it was a hot air balloon, Greeley balloonist Dan Helmboldt said it would have to be someone who not only ignored the law but was also pretty stupid.

"You can't fly a balloon after sunset because of FAA regulations," Helmboldt said. "It's also very dangerous, because you can't see power lines and can't see the ground where you might want to land."

UFO expert Clifford Clift of Greeley is the international director of MUFON -- the Mutual UFO Network. The organization has a UFO hotline for reporting strange things in the sky, but no reports came in Wednesday night or Thursday.

However, at last week's MUFON meeting in Greeley, someone brought in a photo of a UFO that was recently hovering east of La Salle. "The man who took the photo didn't want to be identified because he didn't want people to think he was strange," Clift said. 'But frankly, the photo looked like a flying saucer."

Several people were out Wednesday night looking for Comet Holmes, a large comet that cane been seen with the naked eye at night. However, everyone who reported the "balloon" said they were certain they weren't seeing a comet but something much closer.

And, whatever it was, it's still unidentified.

Did you see something?

If you would like to report something strange to the Mutual Unidentified Flying Object Network, call Clifford Clift at (970) 302-9118.