No, That Wasn’t a Search Party Helicopter in New Hampshire on Saturday Night

Editor's note: This article was written by a Townsquare Media Northern New England contributor and may contain the individual's views, opinions, or personal experiences.

Hurricane Fiona

Saturday night in New England was an interesting one. Most areas were feeling the effects of Hurricane Fiona reaching landfall in nearby Nova Scotia, which created residual weather for us to deal with in the form of strong winds. In fact, some areas in New Hampshire and Maine experienced 60mph winds, which caused some drama with losing electricity.

Brian Scalabrine in New Hampshire

Not only were we dealing with Hurricane Fiona, but the forecast in Portsmouth, New Hampshire on Saturday night called for a White Mamba appearance, as former Boston Celtics star Brian Scalabrine was on the Pease Tradeport at the Seacoast Cancer Center to Light Up the Night as a lead-in to the following morning's Seacoast Cancer 5K put on by Wentworth-Douglass Hospital.

But there was another event on Saturday night that wasn't at all expected. In fact, during the above-mentioned Light Up the Night event in Portsmouth involving Brian Scalabrine and the Seacoast Cancer Center, just as the sun had set and darkness was filling the sky, there was a noticeable bright white light being cast above.

There were no erratic movements, so there were thankfully none of the usual go-to UFO rumors. But it was also too bright and large of a light to be an airplane. Which gave off the vibe of a late night search being conducted via helicopter -- except there was no sound associated with a helicopter you'd normally here, and the light wasn't moving quickly from side to side like you'd see during a search.

But little did we all know that Portsmouth wasn't the only city seeing that light. In fact, New Hampshire wasn't the only state, as proven by the video that WGME meteorologist Charlie Lopresti posted.

And it wouldn't take long for us to learn that New England wasn't the only region of the country that was seeing the light, either.

The above video was taken in North Carolina, and the below video taken in Myrtle Beach at the same time shows exactly what the cause of the light seen across the east coast actually was.

SpaceX launch

According to Seacoast Current and the Myrtle Beach video above, the light we all saw was caused by a SpaceX launch that went off on Saturday night. just after 7:30p. The Falcon 9 rocket was carrying 52 Starlink satellites to deploy that, according to Seacoast Current, bring high-speed broadband internet around the world.

So prepare yourself for more TikTok video recording, posting, and watching, because a bunch of us just got a boost in internet speed, courtesy of Elon Musk and SpaceX.