Further Review of UFO Activity for the Start of 2013
As mentioned in my last UFO hub, UFO sightings took a nose dive in regards to the number of events submitted to the reporting agencies early this year after 18 months of steady and significant increases. Unfortunately, the numbers out of the National UFO Reporting Center in the state of Washington show what appears to be a large chunk of missing data during at least the first month of 2013. However, during this same period, the numbers coming out of the Mutual UFO Network appear more consistent with what would be expected when dealing with the complete picture (more on this at the end of this hub).
In this second part examining this phase of recent UFO activity, I decided to test an hypothesis of mine. I have created a formula to help identify the occurrence of a UFO flap (period of increased UFO activity covering a few days in time and often confined to a small geographic area). After the results for a given month are in, I determine the average daily frequency of reports for that month and use that as a bar or threshold that reports must meet or exceed to qualify for a flap day. If they pass step 1 in the assessment then they need to pass the close encounter and daylight sighting percentage test. If they have at least 10% of each for a given day that becomes a flap day. In the future I may make exceptions for those that come close to qualifying if other criteria are met but that was not the case this time.
What arose from this scrutiny of reporting days for UFOs in the first two months of 2013 was that there were 10 potential flap days in January and 9 such days in February. I broke down the reports by state for this category and created distribution by state maps (utilizing population density data to weigh significance). I then did the same for the days that did not qualify and compared them for each month.
For January, two states, Montana and South Dakota stood out strongly for both the dates that passed the flap test and those that did not. In February, Texas alone was the only one to be consistently exceptional. What these states seemed to represent in those months was longer standing increases in reports that don't really qualify as flaps.
Potential states that contained a flap that stood out in the maps based on flap pass dates were Arizona in January and Oregon in February. While the flap dates represented about 1/3rd of the total number of days in each of those months, Oregon's 9 sightings (3 from MUFON and 6 from NUFORC) fell on a flap date 2/3rds of the time (all 3 of MUFON's and half of NUFORC's). So in that case, what we found was not a true flap in Oregon but rather that that state seemed to be in line with those determined dates of significance more so than the average state. That might demonstrate that the state has more than the average number of responsible witnesses who are more inclined to come forward to file a report with less likely hoaxers.
But in January we hit pay dirt. On January 14th through the 16th, between 7pm and 8:40pm, there was a true UFO flap experienced by many witnesses in the Phoenix area of Arizona. The last two of those three dates passed the flap day test (the other one came close). All witnesses reported glowing lights in the distance, often paired in twos (equidistant from each other and apparently connected by a structure between them), southwest of the Phoenix area. Most of the time they produced amber to orange colored light and were stationary. They could be seen for a few minutes and then fade out. Another minute or two they would reappear in a different location. They made no noise and were apparently huge.
The size assessment came from a former military person who compared their report of the 14th with someone else on the same time and day from a considerable distance away. He determined that it must be tens of miles out and thus representing very large objects. Another estimate of size that agreed with his came from a witness on the 16th of the month when the sightings, due to the lights being much closer, were a more dramatic experience.
To get a better idea of just how significant these events were, there were 20 sightings reported to MUFON over the course of those three days in Arizona and all of those were in the Phoenix metropolitan area. There were only 12 more sightings for all of Arizona for the 28 days remaining in that month (thus 62.5% of the January sightings in that state occurred in that small space and time). There were also 75 reports for all of the USA submitted to MUFON during those three days (thus more than 25% of all reports in the United States then were concentrated in that small area). Put another way, outside of the flap period Arizona had one reported UFO event every 2.3 days (or .43 per day) and inside the flap window it was 9.3 reports per day (or 21.7Xs more intense during the flap than the period outside of it).
Since proposing four cycles measured in days that can potentially produce flaps, I investigated to see if this flap aligned with a peak in any of those cycles. There was no such alignment. The only pattern that emerged was that the flap occurred just a few days before the average daily frequency of sightings dropped abruptly from 12.3 per day (for 12/1/12-1/19/13, excluding 12/31/12 & 1/1/13) to 7.8 per day (for 1/20/13-2/28/13). It was almost as if the UFOs had a soft spot for Phoenix and wanted to pay a visit before they went away for awhile.
All data= MUFON (USA only)
Daily avg for 12/1-12/30/12= 12.2
Daily avg for 1/2-1/19/13= 12.4
Daily avg for 1/20-1/31/13= 7.9
Daily avg for 2/1-2/28/13= 7.7
Copyright © 2013 Joseph W. Ritrovato
