Blinding Flash and then extreme velocity vertical takeoff of object.On August 18th ,2001, I was traveling Nwest on highway 30 toward Rock River,WY at about 2230hrs, when a extremely bright flash such as a explosion of some sort, it was so bright it made my headlights on high beams ineffecetive for it was as bright as full daylight. It was a bright orange flash then a object left at a extereme rate of speed verticaly and escaped the atmosphere in less than 1 second! This stretch of road is usally pretty desolate aand I do not know of any other traffic other than another lonely motorist that I passed as I came into Rock River. I have seen explosions before and nothing other than a nuclear blast from my military training is or as bright as this incident. I am aware of other incidents in this area for many years of which are documented I do not know? Any one else who experienced this event may e-mail me at ((e-mail address deleted)).com.((NUFORC Note: We attempted to telephone this witness, but was unavailable on the date of the report. A family member confirmed that the witness and the son had reported the incident to a family member. We expect to speak with the witness on 21AU01. PD))((NUFORC Note: We have spoken with this witness, and we find his report to be credible. The date of the sighting was, in fact, Friday night, August 17, 2001. We have corrected the date here. At least one newspaper in Wyoming is preparing a story about the sighting at the time of this writing. PD))