up and is kind of skipping along, following the terrain. that s what it was doing when it went by us. it wasn t very high. you see in the video. it was barely clearing the trees, and the tether that was hooked to it was actually dragging and getting caught in trees and power lines. somebody said that there was a truck on fire. i don t know whether that had anything to do with it or not. but there was quite a it was going by for quite a while, so i got a pretty good video of it. scott yorty, thank you very much, and thanks for having the presence of mind to grab your device and take these eerie, moving pictures. you couldn t blame anyone for thinking that it was just a kind of dark-moving cloud formation on a stormy day, but upon closer inspection, there it is.
it s relatively low in the sky, as it was in a couple of the still photos that are populating social media right now. the good news is, it is no longer the threat it once was to aviation and the countryside, when it was moving at 16,000 feet. really bouncing along on some robust upper-level winds today as part of this massive low pressure system. it has precipitously lost altitude and apparently has come to a rest or maybe several of them in pennsylvania. scott yorty who shot this video is with us now. where are you and can you tell us, where is the airship? it s actually kept floating by. it was relatively low when it went by, dragging its tether, taking out power lines when it went by. i shot the video right from my porch at my house.
long between the intervals, but it appears to be very close to being down for good. now, according to officials, they still don t know exactly what caused the balloon to suddenly deflate in that rear section as you were talking about. they insist that norad, the f-16 jets were not involved, although one official said, you know, i m going to wait until we get our 4:00 brief to confirm that precisely. but there s no indication that the u.s. military was involved in attempting to bring down this two football field long aerostat. there s a photo credit in the upper left of the screen. scott yorty took this photograph and we re waiting to establish communications with him. because at this point, you can make out detail on it, it s nearing the end of its journey.
again, we realize people are tuning in and the story you might have heard a bit of is true. it s in the trade known as an aerostat. as a semirigid air ship filled with helium that s divided up into different sections on board. this is mostly a flying radar device. there s the still picture that we saw on social media. we have conveniently circled the air ship in red. focusing your attention to the middle of the picture there. it has been loose, untethered. the tether can measure from 5,000 to 10,000 feet long. this has as far as we know no on-board system of propulsion of its own. it has been traveling at about an altitude of 16,000 feet. in basically a northern direction. there are there is a wing of f-16s stationed at atlantic city, new jersey. the air national guard. been in existence for a long, long time. they were scrambled today to get kind of eyes on this thing. of course, the difference in traveling speeds between an air ship traveling at the speed of the wind and