UFO Weather Report for June and Early July 2013

June of 2012 was a record month for UFOs. The tally from the Mutual UFO Networ (MUFON) was 423 reports. June of 2013 beat that record with 435 reports. As a result, you might expect that the same thing could happen for July 2013 when comparing the numbers to July 2012. My present projection doesn't indicate that however. The trend was up for the last few months but it has been slowing down for the 10 days from June 24 through July 3.

July 4 for 2012 and July 4 for 2010 were tied for first place for single day results in the United States which I believe for the most part can be attributed to an increased number of witnesses to potential UFOs during what is usually prime time for sightings.

Sightings numbers for June 2013 looked like a recent accounting for stock market activity; a bit of a roller coaster ride. The sightings numbers from MUFON were a high 19.75 reports per day during the first 4 days of the month, went down to 12.85 for the next 13 days, went up again to 18.67 for the following 6 days, and then slowed to 11 per day for the last week of the month. And it didn't stop there; so far, the first 3 days of July averages out to 8.33 per day.

At the end of this hub I look at the early returns from MUFON for the 4^th of July, and it looks like this year again has a bumper crop. But this may not be the only exceptionally high day for July 2013. During July 6th to the 9th, I am expecting a rare alignment of several cycles measured in days that parallel increased UFO activity. The last time this happened was in France during March 1974.

Like then, it might not happen in this country this time either, but if it does one can get a possible clue of where it might occur by looking at the last 13 days of June 2013 and seeing just where sighting concentrations occurred in the United States.

As I write this, the National UFO Reporting Center or NUFORC just updated their web site and now have the report numbers for June 2013. In 2012 they had 735 reports, but for June 2013 they have only 567. The total number will probably become over 600 when more reports come in over the next few weeks, when I expect the numbers to show that the sightings reports will be down by at least 15% for June 2013 when compared to the year before.

However, on the plus side, this gives me the opportunity to compare their results to MUFON's.

Both sets of data show an increase in sightings during the first few days of June 2013 and about three weeks into it. As a result, I combined NUFORC's data for June 19 to June 23 with MUFON's for June 18 to June 23. The result is the state UFO intensity map shown at the opening of this hub (based on 232 report events). The last week of the month was also combined and the resulting state intensity map is given below (gleaned from 175 events).

Looking at both maps, the states with the most consistent results are those of Oregon (down a bit towards the end of the month) and Nebraska (up a bit later in the month). Colorado though is perhaps the best place to be for any upcoming flap in July. The Denver area was hopping when other state's activities were down from a week earlier.

To get an idea of how the reports fell on a map without taking into account intensity based on the state's population density, I am including maps below showing the MUFON and NUFORC sightings report locations for June 19 to June 23 and June 24 to June 30 below (courtesy of sightingsreport.com).

As can be seen in the second map, Texas showed a significant increase in activity later in the month of June. Looking at the early returns from MUFON for the July 4, 2013 event date however, Texas is no longer a contender in sightings reports (based on 82 reports submitted on the 4^th and the 5^th of July). Oregon also comes less into play. This can be seen in the UFO State Intensity Map below.

Just an hour or two ago I noticed that NUFORC's web site added reports for July 4th, 2013. I have now combined their almost 90 reports into the MUFON data for a total of 173 reports (the total for July 4, 2012 was 322 and for July 4, 2010 was 354 per the sightingsreport.com website). Given below is the updated UFO State Intensity Map for July 4, 2013.

Less weight should be given to the states of Washington and Montana for two differrent reasons. In the case of Washington, although they had the most sightings of any single state (9), they also have more potential witnesses than any other state due to perhaps the lowest risk that fireworks will start a fire combined with perhaps the most liberal fireworks laws of any state. Thus the number of sightings would be over inflated in that state and not ideally represented (in other words the other states would be handicapped). In the case of the state of Montana, they have the highest intensity rating of any state but they manage to do so based on only 1 reported sighting. This is because that state has an extremely low population density. Like Washington, the intensity for that state is over inflated (or again the other states are handicapped as a result).

Due to the above considerations, my best suggestion is that one should aim to find themselves situated in either the state of Colorado, Nebraska, or Idaho (and Missouri is probably a good bet as well). This is based on the combined results of MUFON and NUFORC for the 4th but also what states are the most consistent ones based on earlier activity. In that vein, Iowa or Kansas and perhaps Minnesota should probably be mentioned here as well as good spots to sit out a possible flap that I am forecasting for July 6^th through the 9^th of 2013.

To give you one last perspective on things, below is a UFO State Intensity Map for the whole month of June 2013 based on 499 NUFORC reports (just released on July 3, 2013).

Copyright © 2013 Joseph W. Ritrovato