The Green Fireball at North Powder

J. B. McCullough was about two and a half miles north of North Powder when he saw it "in the heavens directly south of me, a fireball". "This object appeared to come out of nowhere," his statement says. At first it ran in a horizontal line from north-west to south-east, "as having been ejected from a huge Roman candle". It kept to that level "by whatever power held". After about five and a half miles it was spent and "arched earthward in a natural down grade" through roughly ninety degrees. Then "it extinguished itself". He compared its colour to "a high tensity neon sign of green - perhaps on the light green side".

What is on the record

The account is Project Sign's Incident 230, released by the Department of War in May 2026 in the Incident Summaries 173-233. The summary sheet dates it 4 August 1948 and names the observer as a Boise man travelling on US 30. It records "Green glow" as the peculiarity. McCullough put the object at 5,500 feet above sea level, a figure he himself called argumentative. He did not recall "much of a meteor type tail, but the object did have a definite fluorescent glow circumventing itself."

Someone at Project Sign wrote "See Incident #223" at the foot of the statement. That incident is the run of green flares reported over New Mexico on 5 December 1948, which the same file records from pilots and residents around Las Vegas and Albuquerque. Brad Sparks's catalogue of Blue Book cases lists the North Powder sighting from an OSI and LaPaz fireball catalogue of May 1950.

The sheet itself describes the light as "like meteor". J. Allen Hynek's index placed Incident 230 among the possible astronomical cases, with fair or low probability. No second witness appears.

Why it sits where it does

L4 · OFFICIAL RECORD — a released government record names who saw it. McCullough is the only witness, and no independent testimony sits beside the file in the archive. The tier measures sourcing rather than truth. What burned green over the Oregon highway is not resolved here.