Video captures strange lights seen in sky over North Okanagan

A puzzling light in the night sky was spotted by multiple witnesses in the North Okanagan, Wednesday.

Gayle Zimmerman tells Castanet she looked out her window on Coldstream's Middleton Mountain about 9:30 p.m. and saw something "coming down and moving across the sky."

"It was green coloured and seemed like it wasn't a shooting star," she says.

"It was quite high and went east to west ... its trajectory looked like it could have fallen into (Kalamalka) Lake.

"It was the most spectacular thing I've ever seen ... so bright, so large – 10 times larger than a shooting star."

She went to grab her husband, but by then it had disappeared.

"I just couldn't get over it, my mouth was just wide open," she recalled Thursday morning.

Meanwhile, Sarah, a resident of rural Enderby, says she was strange lights last night as well.

This was the second time she says she has seen them, the first being in March. This time, she captured video with her cellphone.

The images show a ring-like, blue-green light in the dark sky.

"I looked up, and it was brighter than any other light in the sky," she says.

She estimated it was about the same height in the sky as the surrounding mountains, not as high as a passing airliner.

"It felt strange, interesting ... I wasn't scared, I wanted to see more of it," she says.

The strange light stayed in one spot and "hovered around" for about 10 minutes. When she looked back, it was gone. The object didn't make any sound.

Meteorologist Doug Lundquist with Environment Canada said he's not convinced the lights were UFOs.

"These things are usually satellites, hundreds of them go by every night," he said.

After viewing the video, Lundquist characterized it as "interesting," but added it doesn't include enough of the sky to assess the clouds that night."

However, he says there was a system approaching the Okanagan Wednesday night and "cloud can partially obscure lights in the sky and create halo effects ranging from the moon to lights of any source from such as satellites and planes.

"That being said, this is outside of my realm of expertise to assess other than there was likely cloud that could cause effects to lights last night."

Castanet has also reached out to the National Research Council of Canada for comment from the White Lake radio observatory south of Penticton on whether there were any unusual astronomical occurrences.

The incident follows reports of strange lights over Kelowna on Friday night.