After receiving a series of reports about strange lights in the Southern California sky on Monday night, San Diego police said they had solved the mystery.
The orange lights, which were reported from Tijuana, Mexico, downtown San Diego and elsewhere, were, in fact, flares being used for a military exercise, San Diego lifeguards notified SDPD.
Tips began coming into NBC 7 around 10 p.m., including one from a La Mesa resident who lives on Mount Helix, who said, "[We] saw a row of three orange dots above the sky downtown. They never moved. Then suddenly there were five. And then six. They never went off in different directions, but the lights would just blink off on a few and then come back on a few minutes later. It was quite weird yet interesting."
Other callers told NBC 7 that the flares were visible as far north as La Jolla and as far south as Rosarito, in Baja California.
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NBC 7 reached out to military officials but has yet to hear back.