The Truth about Northwest UFOs

Recently, the Seattle Times featured a story about a famous 1947 UFO (unidentified flying object) sighting in Washington.... the incident that started the UFO craze around the world.

And this UFO sighting is not the only one in our area.  For example, Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich admitted during the Democratic presidential debate on October 30, 2007 that had seen a UFO while visiting our state.  And even Seattle's most recognizable landmark, the Space Needle, is clearly a stylized form of a flying saucer.

What is the truth about this UFO mania in our region?  Is there something about our area that is attractive to visiting aliens?  Or could there be another explanation?  Something more "scientific"?  Perhaps a meteorological explanation?

The original June 24, 1947 incident involved Kenneth Arnold, a businessman from Boise, Idaho who was flying a small plane near Mount Rainier when he spotted a chain of nine "saucer-lie" objects above and east of the mountain.  Brilliant in the sun, these objects darted towards Mt. Adams an "an incredible speed', which he estimated to be at least 1200 mph.  His account went viral across the world and thus started the UFO/flying saucer craze.

 An investigation by the U.S. government revealed little, although some folks suggest that our military knows a lot more about it, including flying a captured saucer in Area 51 in Nevada.

But there is another possible, if not probable explanation.  One suggested by one of my most distinguished colleagues, UW Professor Richard J. Reed:   lenticular clouds associated with atmospheric mountain waves.

As air is pushed up by a mountain range, the air can go into an oscillation over and downstream of the mountain crest (see illustration).   When the air rises, the air can become saturated, producing lens-shaped (lenticular) clouds.

 The lenticular clouds are quite striking, often looking like flying saucers.

Professor Reed, studying the atmospheric conditions during Arnold's 1947 flight, found that they were just those expected during mountain wave cloud periods.

You can read the details in his paper "Flying Saucers over Mt. Rainier" in the April 1958 of Weatherwise Magazine.   And what about the movement of the "flying saucers"?   Dr. Reed noted that if atmospheric conditions approaching Rainier were changing, the location of the lenticular clouds could rapidly shift, give the impression of rapid movement.

But what about Congressman Kucinch?  What did he see?   One might note that Presidential candidates have a tendency to imagine things, but lets put that aside for a moment.

Where was the Congressman when he saw the flying saucers?   Staying at Shirley McLane's home in Graham, Washington (red color in map)--a location very close to Mt. Rainier!

Mount Rainier, the region's most massive volcano is the most prolific producers of lenticular clouds.  No wonder its a focus of UFO sightings.

When I was an undergraduate at Cornell, I worked with Professor Carl Sagan, who had a lot to say about UFOs.   He told me that that although he was convinced that intelligent life was prolific around the Universe, traveling interstellar distances would verge on the impossible.  He was very skeptical that any of the UFO sightings were real...and that they said more about folks psychological state than aliens visiting our planet.