is there an object that can make clouds on a pitch black night flicker in an orange light?

Question

i was out in the suberbs of my city at my barn, it was late at night and it was a cloudy night, the only city was a couple miles away in the opposite direction. i saw a large chunk of the cloudy sky flickering in an orange glow - it looked like something you would see in a science-fiction movie. I don't belive in aliens and i refuse to belive that it was some sort of space craft, the area of the sky was to large (maybe about 2 square acers). It was litteraly like a large fire in the sky and it was not lighting - the flickering continued for at least an hour non stop and i left before it stopped. i haven't seen it since. is there something that could make an area that large flicker like that?

Answer 1

i could imagine that lights from the city may have caused reflections from the underside of the clouds.

i've been fooled by this more than once...
and if there is no dust or fog between the surface and the clouds you do not even see any light effects except the reflection on the cloud itself.

This is what i suggest what it was, since you said it appeared for at least an hour.
Sometimes clubs for example do such a light show intentionally, using lasers or powerful lamps to cause that.
difficult to say if it was that.

An iridium-Flare does not last an hour, its just seconds ...

Answer 2

Well if you live anywhere near a military base it sounds like a aeroflare which can last depending on the wind conditions for over 35-40 minutes, burning with various colors depending on the needs of the personel requesting the aeroflares.

You can check out the the NOFORC website, its a relatively (considering the topic material) no BS website which tracks peoples occurances like yourself, you can and should make a contribution to the site. The scientific community often uses this site to determine if a particular sighting is more credible or not.

Many years ago, I saw a bright green streak across the sky during a foggy night, that lasted several minutes, it turned out that a bunch of other people across 10 states saw it as well at nearly the same time and a day or so later I found out that NASA suspected a comet grazed the upper atmosphere based partially on the times and sequence of when people saw the object (in the east first, in the west later in a straight line moving over north america taking almost 45 minutes in total).

So yeah that's very cool and detailed have a good night.

http://www.nuforc.org/index.html

Answer 3

An Iridium flare from a satellite can give that effect, especially in rural locations far from the illumination of city lights.

Answer 4

A blazing house fire would fill the bill!