Night of the UFOs in Texas - 8 January examined

Night of the UFOs in Texas - 8 January examined

Submitted by annunakix on Sun, 04/13/2008 - 00:24
email: [email protected]

For some of us, time has passed by slowly since the first reports of strange objects in the sky over central Texas that it seems like it happened years ago rather than mere months. So much has been written about, discussed in forums and scrutinized by media that it's easy to lose sight of the sightings that started the bulk of the commotion. Let's take a trip back in history...waaaay back to 08 January 2008 if you will. The following were reports submitted to NUFORC (National UFO Reporting Center) concerning the evening of 08 January 2008.

NUFORC:

• 08 Jan 2008 0100 - Stephenville, TX 1 "...oval type of shape in the clouds..."
  
• 08 Jan 2008 1445 - San Antonio, TX (45 min.) 2 "...bright fireball going from north to south at a high altitude...took several pictures..."
  
• 08 Jan 2008 1714 - Stephenville, TX 3 "...Flashing strobes, silent, flames out the back side and jets chashing it!...coming from the east at about 3500 foot agl heading west toward Stephenville...about 2000 to 3000 mph...made several changes of flash patterns and configurations...2 seperate vertical flames...never head ANY noise...I am a pilot...
  
• 08 Jan 2008 1920 - Liberty Hill, TX (21 min.) 4 "...I have been a police officer for 17 yrs...extremely bright orange or flame colored lights rising 300-500 feet above the horizon...horizontally aligned and spanned an area quite wide...lights would come and go in various numbers ranging from as little as two and as many as 12..."
  
• 08 Jan 2008 2000 - Baird/Putnam, TX (5-10 min.) 5 "...3 orangish lights appear one after the other in a row in the Southern skies...appeared one, two, three then faded out one, two, three...they began to appear again...saw 2 planes right before we exited to the east in the same vicinity the lights had been..."
  
• 08 Jan 2008 2200 - Liberty Hill, TX (1 hr.) 6 "...4 bright burning orange lights toward the north...just above the ground and appeared to be 5 to 6 miles away...repeated this process for about an hour..."
  
• 08 Jan 2008 2330 - Azle, TX (3-4 min.) 7 "...northeast of my home...round object and was encircled with white lights and red lights, which seemed to change, at once glance it was red, the next glance it was white...moving away until it faded..."
  

Let's examine this a little bit closer now. Obviously something was seen by multiple witnesses on this date in the central Texas area. Some had an orange glow similar to fireballs, orange/flame colored from many different directions. Others lights were reported as stationary strobing lights that changed colors from white to red, occasionally witnessed to disappear or move out of sight.

Steve Allen, a local pilot reported his sighting on 08 January 2008 where he noticed 7 or 8 very bright intermittent strobing lights traversing at a high rate of speed from East to West. The lights apparently came to a "stop" over Stephenville in an arc formation. Several seconds later the lights reconfigured to a vertical position still randomly flashing. 2 or 3 seconds later the formation changed to 2 formations of random flashing vertical lights. 2 or 3 seconds later the lights were gone and reformed as a "fire" (akin to an oxygen-acetylene torch) in a box rectangle formation approximately 50 yards wide, 150 yards tall. Finally, 2 or 3 seconds it disappeared.

As the reporter for this piece I am bound to be objective. However, I would like to inject a small bit of personal experience into this story. During February 2007 I was looking South over the Gulf of Mexico on a very clear night and witnessed a set of 5, bright orange lights that appeared consecutively, one after the other. The lights then extinguished in the same order. I was excited to watch as the process was repeated westward again in the same fashion. The lights appeared to possibly be part of a very large craft, at least 1 mile in width. I also spotted 2 jet aircraft in the immediate area of the lights during the event. Upon further investigation it was easily confirmed that the entire display was a result night training from aircrews in Tyndall AFB using standard flares. As it turned out, it was a regular occurance as I witnessed the same events over the same area at the same time the following 3 nights. I spoke with countermeasures specialists from Moody AFB who confirmed that some flares exhibit these exact characteristics. (Phoenix anyone?)

After reading many of the reports of the central Texas sightings, one can't help but ponder the similarities which lends to such a prosaic explanation. Yet there are other reports to consider.

There are eyewitness accounts of stationary bright lights in the sky that "strobe" from white to red. Could this be terrestrial, or is it something else. Perhaps it could be the brightest star in the night sky during that period which scintillates excitedly low in the horizon...Sirius. Perhaps not.

Finally, there is the account of Steve Allen. High speed strobing lights morphing from arcs to single vertical formation, to double vertical, finally disappearing as quickly as it started.

It was an exciting night to say the least and there were certainly many honest folks who witnessed sights hard to explain. What really happened that night over Texas remains an enigma still, yet some terrestrial explanations are not off the radar yet.



[edit on 13-4-2008 by AnnunakiX]