3/9/2011 flashes of orange lights in the sky

As the person who posted this video says in their description of their video:

Can anyone explain these bright orange flashes in the sky. I shot this on march 9 2011, from my front yard, in Crystal Lake Illinois at 9:23pm. I was facing west.I've googled this and everything tells me this was seen worldwide

They seem to be finding this may be being seen worldwide. So, I am wondering if any of our members have seen it, but didnt happen to have a camera at the time to record it, if what they saw looked like this? Kind of eerie to see. My guess might be heat lightning lighting the sky, but thats just a guess Im making. If other members have seen this in other parts of the world, we may be able to rule that out.

Could just be lightning, but I don't know that I've ever seen it flash orange...unless there had been a wild fire in the area. Spooky thing for sure.

I did a quick search myself and it seems there have been reports of this type of thing, but they are older from like 2009. Im hoping someone from here has seen it recently or even from his area in Illinois.

Nice, i didnt see anything here. I probably wasnt looking XD
Is it still happening?

Probably lightning but I have never seen it like that before very cool...

"the sky turns different colors depending on the severity of the storm. yellow and green are really bad and orange is REALLY REALLY bad. the color comes from the hail inside the clouds. hail is caused by strong updrafts in the clouds, so more hail=worse storm. hail bends sunlight towards the yellow, green, or orange end of the spectrum. the more hail there is, the more the light is bent. orange means the light is bent a lot, which means there's a lot of hail, which means it is a really really bad storm.

were the clouds all lumpy on the bottom? that also means that it's a really really bad storm. usually lumpy clouds are orange. either way, get to the basement!!!"

sourve answers.yahoo.com...

Originally posted by onehuman
As the person who posted this video says in their description of their video:

Can anyone explain these bright orange flashes in the sky. I shot this on march 9 2011, from my front yard, in Crystal Lake Illinois at 9:23pm. I was facing west.I've googled this and everything tells me this was seen worldwide

They seem to be finding this may be being seen worldwide. So, I am wondering if any of our members have seen it, but didnt happen to have a camera at the time to record it, if what they saw looked like this? Kind of eerie to see. My guess might be heat lightning lighting the sky, but thats just a guess Im making. If other members have seen this in other parts of the world, we may be able to rule that out.

I decided search 'Orange Lightning' on here in the hope that someone else on ATS had witnessed this. In the past seven days it's happened three different nights. I estimate it started here last Wednesday, then again on Saturday night and just now (1am Wednesday). Unlike the video it's one flash every half hour or so, and maybe only five or six flashes per night. At first, last week I put it down to storms as it was stormy last week, and at the weekend I raised an eyebrow and again put it down to stormy weather. Tonight there is no storm, no rain, just ice on the roads and frozen snow on the grass and the temperature is hanging around the 0°c to 1°c mark there is no chance of a storm (only going by experience). Given the frequency of these displays now it gave me reason to investigate, which brought me here. I hope others follow suit.

2.53am and that's another one. Split-second flashes, no chance of getting a photo.

March 17.2012 at 3:26 AM I was heading down Hillsboro Blvd in Manchester TN past Walmart heading toward the Viam plant and Stamtec, in fact I had just passed Stamtec when I seen 2 huge bright flashes low in the sky they were minutes apart, after that randomly higher in the sky there were several blue flashes. I have been searching for answers. I drove on down that road for a few miles and didn't see anything unusual besides the non stop faint blue flashes.
When the big orange flashes happened the person in the car in front of me jetted off in that direction doing about 75 mph, I am assuming to see what it was. He was gone out of sight! I'd love to talk to whom ever that was!

For the record: It was about 60 degrees outside and I could see all the stars, so the sky was pretty clear.

I thought about a possible meteor/fireball thing and contacted Bill Cooke who heads up the NASA sky cam in Tullahoma/Manchester area. He wrote this back to me, and I find the wording to be a little odd.
"What you saw was definitely not a meteor".
So, again I wrote him asking for more info. still waiting for a reply. To me when you say "what you saw was definitely not", you are implying that you know something more, correct? Or am I just being a suspicious female?

I didn't capture the orange flashes but I did pull out my camera to try and get the small blue ones, the video pretty much came out black they didn't show up. Not even sure it's worth trying to enhance.

I would really like to know what this was!!! We can most likely rule out heat lightning and lightning since it was cool and the sky was clear. We can rule out a meteor as well. I'm out of guesses here. Any thoughts?