Sighting in Saint-Porchaire, March 3, 1980

Two separate sets of sightings took place a few days apart, on 3 and 7 March 1980.

On 3 March at about 10:15 pm, a driver and their daughter were suddenly dazzled by a red light coming from a ball skimming the horizon. It was about the size of a football and moved silently from southeast to northwest, seemingly in steps and at high speed. Other people saw it too, including gendarmes: at 10:25 pm they noticed a large reddish point of light about 5° above the horizon, which slowly faded away in the northwest around 10:35 pm. They returned to the spot the next day and, through binoculars, watched an orange luminous object giving off bluish flashes; it vanished completely at the horizon at 10:45 pm.

On 7 March around 10:10 pm, the same people and others saw a new phenomenon. A witness who was getting home and stepping out of their car saw a luminous ball made up of several circles of different colours, and a flash of lightning struck the ground at their child's feet. The ball, estimated at 20 to 25 cm across, moved from the west toward the northwest until it disappeared. No noise was heard and no electric shock was felt. However, many people noticed a voltage drop on the EDF power line, in their homes or on the street lighting, and one witness spoke of an electric arc between a power line and the ground.

The GEIPAN classified the case as B. On 3 March, Venus was very bright (magnitude -4.1), less than 5° above the horizon, and set around 10:38 pm; its apparent speed and stepwise descent are explained by its very low, distant position. The 7 March event was probably an electrical phenomenon, linked to the disturbance on the EDF line.