The Curious Reason I May Have Become a Flat Earther

Here's a thing:

Back on November 7, 2015, I and several others were walking through a parking lot around 7pm. It was dark, and our eyes were suddenly caught by an extremely bright, unusual light in the western sky. We stood and watched this light until it slowly faded out. It was so unusual that I didn't forget it.

When I looked it up on the Internet the next morning, there were several articles (here, here, and here, among others, written in the two or three days following the incident) and a couple videos about it. This video, taken by amateurs in Southern California, includes some foul language (some F-bombs), but the light show they captured is exactly what I saw.



So the government says it was a rocket test over California, and they closed down air traffic over the Pacific. Fine. Just because it looks nothing like a rocket trail or like any light I've ever seen in the sky before, fine. We're used to explanations from the government that stretch the limits of credulity--not that I actually believe in aliens from outer space for a number of reasons. But I do believe the government has technology far beyond what they normally allow the public to see.

But that's not the issue I want to address, even if it is a good subject.

The question I have is this: if that rocket test happened over 670 miles to the southwest from where I was standing, how did I see it?

In the video above, the light is high in the sky, and it's massive. Standing where I was in Northern Utah, I saw it high in the sky, as well. In fact, to the direct west of my location is a range of very tall mountains. Given the curvature of the earth, I should not have been able to see that light either because it was below the horizon line or (even if it was very, very high in the sky above LA) still hidden behind the range of mountains. Yet I saw that light high in the sky, unobscured by the mountains. People reported seeing this same thing from all over the Western States.

There are two explanations I can think of.

Either the officials failed to mention that they shot off multiple rockets in various places throughout the West simultaneously (a theory that is not confirmed in any of the articles about the subject)

or...

the earth is actually flat and there is no curvature of a global world that would obscure my ability to see a light of that magnitude and height even from 670 miles away.

I can think of no other explanations.