On December 30th, 2019 around 10:45 pm a large explosion rattled a good chunk of my home area, Saratoga County, NY, followed by an odd green glow in the sky seen for miles. Explanations ranged from "frostquakes", to transformers exploding (debunked) to meteors. A meteor was the final conclusion that was drawn, but there seems to be as little evidence of that as anything else. More fantastical, or sarcastic types, may as well have just assumed it to be a herald.
Then a few weeks later, January 16th became an odd day for my Facebook feed. First, a good friend of mine (who remains anonymous here) noticed this in the Albany NY sky:
A few folks at the time pointed out similar ring pattern phenomena, but all seemingly at night, in cloudy skies. The fact that his sighting was in broad daylight, in a mostly clear sky makes his quite a bit more interesting. In his Facebook post he was certain the lights were not drones, however, in his NUFORC report, he does not say one way or the other. His NUFORC report is here:
Very shortly after, another friend of mine, Tara Rule, posted to Facebook this status:
anyone have any idea what this light could be?
It is quite large and hovered right above the clouds for about 20 minutes.
It must have been moving with us during the time it stayed directly across from us,
because it would have moved farther out of my view if it were stationary.
After about 20 minutes, it started to move upward and dart around in a really
bizarre way. If you speed up the video, you can really see how it darts back and
forth in an unnatural way. It was much too fast to be a weather balloon as it kept up
with us, and lasted way too long and was much too large to be ball lightning.
along with these photos, that were taken a few days before, on January 13th, in the skies over New Jersey (approximately near Trenton, according to a later email) on a trip from Orlando FL to NY:
as well as the footage used in this video:
In the video you will notice I have included the raw footage, then a version with brightness / contrast enhanced, as well a third version with slight stabilization and sharpening. I tend to avoid sharpening due to it unfortunately creating artifacts in the video, but I figured the dim nature of the video could use all the help it could get. Finally, I added a fourth version with the raw footage at 3x speed. At this speed the erratic nature of the light is obvious against the clouds as it sort of bounces around the sky, even with the camera occasionally wandering about.
Upon seeing her post, I suggested she report the sighting to both MUFON and NUFORC (which I recommend anyone with a sighting do). Here is her NUFORC report, which she also later emailed to me:
Here it is in full:
I was on Frontier Airlines flight F91006, with direct service from Orlando, FL to Albany, NY on January 13th, 2020.
At 5:30 pm, I looked out the window and noticed a bright light. The light hung directly above the cloud line. At first, I thought it may have been a tall building or another plane, but I saw the city lights below and realized that no building would have been tall enough to reach such heights since we were at 30,000ft. I realized it wasn’t another plane, as the light stayed consistent and did not move. I watched it for a few moments and saw another plane in the distance fly in front of it. At that point, I was able to gauge the size of it a bit better. The plane that flew in front of the light appeared much smaller than the light behind it. The other plane was maybe about 1/3 of the size of the light, and the light was very far away from the other plane as well. At that point, I decided to take a photo.
Moments later, I heard a few other passengers talking about the strange light. I did not engage with them.
The light stayed in the same place for 5-8 minutes. If the light had been stationary, it would have moved out of sight of my window. It stayed in the exact same place relative to my window. That’s when I realized the light must have been moving at the same speed that we were flying. That’s when I began filming at 5:38 pm.
After a few moments, the light ascended from its original position. It moved upward and then started to make unnatural movements laterally. Over the course of about 3 minutes, it moved higher into the sky and continued to make rapid movements to the left and right. The light would occasionally pause and remain still for a few moments.
Eventually, the light moved back toward the rear of the plane and I could no longer see it out the window.
The city I listed is an approximate location based on the time and flight path.
Unfortunately, I had fallen asleep at some point during my flight. I woke up from some rough turbulence and some unusual electrical activity on the plane. (Seat belt sign turning on and off, flickering lights.) I looked out the window when I woke up and I immediately saw the light. Unfortunately I cannot account for where the light came from and how it manifested because I was asleep prior to seeing it.
Having watched the video and read the report a few times, a few thoughts came to mind;
1. The "unusual electrical activity". While a common detail reported in most sightings dating back to 1951, Tara explains that she woke up to both it AND rough turbulence. I am not aware of any reports (outside of outlier cases with seemingly antagonistic lights/craft) causing turbulence, however I am aware that turbulence can occasionally cause unusual electrical activity. This is caused by planes diverting power to systems that are a higher priority in turbulence.
2. The usual suspects were initially where I landed. Venus (debunked, in my opinion by the obvious movement of the light). Another plane on a similar trajectory (though seemingly debunked by Tara stating she was able to see another plane fly in front of the light, at which point she was able to gauge the size of the light as three times that of a passenger jet).
3. Her first thought that it was a building, I found interesting. There have been a handful other reports in recent years of buildings spotted breaking the clouds, but people realizing the buildings would be 30,000 feet in the air (not to mention the "sky cities" spotted from time to time, explained, perhaps dis-satisfyingly, as fata morgana and hoaxes). This is clearly not the case in the video, but an interesting first thought.
4. Other options of the ab/paranormal variety jump out. Unidentified craft is the first, but in my opinion, least likely. It moves erratically. Seemingly aimless, though intentional, like a fly. Though, as Tara states, it seemed to keep up with the plane, from a distance. If I had to lump it into an ab/para category, I'd file it closer to the "intelligent" light phenomenon with the Min Min Lights, the Marfa Lights, the Brown Mountain lights, etc. Those all generally appear only a few feet above the ground in most cases, however as anyone with even a vague interest in the phenomena would know, a massive amount of sightings involve lights and not (visible) craft.
5. Lastly, though she discounts ball lightning, I'm not certain I can. Ball lightning is not well understood, and it was only fairly recently (2006) that modern science accepted it as existing at all when it was recreated in a lab.
From a phys.org article on ball lightning studies:
"[Scientist John] Lowke proposes that ball lightning occurs in houses and aeroplanes when a stream of ions accumulates on the outside of a glass window and the resulting electric field on the other side excites air molecules to form a ball discharge. The discharge requires a driving electric field of about a million volts.
So, seeing as two planes are in this report, and the east coast of the United States is, in general, a heavy traffic air corridor, is it possible that electrical discharge has built and somehow sustained itself in a pocket of air pressure and whatever other conditions it would need at 30,000 feet to exist? Perhaps. I don't think an answer to that is available until we understand the phenomenon of ball lightning more fully.
I also looked into NUFORC for similar sightings within this four day period from Tara's sighting to the Albany sighting. This is a map with all regional sightings reported to NUFORC between January 13th and 16th, 2020. Red indicates January 13th, blue indicates January 15th, and purple indicates January 16th. Oddly, there were no regional sightings reported to NUFORC on January 14th (though most of the country panicked and reported Starlink like it was War of the Worlds).
1. The "unusual electrical activity". While a common detail reported in most sightings dating back to 1951, Tara explains that she woke up to both it AND rough turbulence. I am not aware of any reports (outside of outlier cases with seemingly antagonistic lights/craft) causing turbulence, however I am aware that turbulence can occasionally cause unusual electrical activity. This is caused by planes diverting power to systems that are a higher priority in turbulence.
2. The usual suspects were initially where I landed. Venus (debunked, in my opinion by the obvious movement of the light). Another plane on a similar trajectory (though seemingly debunked by Tara stating she was able to see another plane fly in front of the light, at which point she was able to gauge the size of the light as three times that of a passenger jet).
3. Her first thought that it was a building, I found interesting. There have been a handful other reports in recent years of buildings spotted breaking the clouds, but people realizing the buildings would be 30,000 feet in the air (not to mention the "sky cities" spotted from time to time, explained, perhaps dis-satisfyingly, as fata morgana and hoaxes). This is clearly not the case in the video, but an interesting first thought.
4. Other options of the ab/paranormal variety jump out. Unidentified craft is the first, but in my opinion, least likely. It moves erratically. Seemingly aimless, though intentional, like a fly. Though, as Tara states, it seemed to keep up with the plane, from a distance. If I had to lump it into an ab/para category, I'd file it closer to the "intelligent" light phenomenon with the Min Min Lights, the Marfa Lights, the Brown Mountain lights, etc. Those all generally appear only a few feet above the ground in most cases, however as anyone with even a vague interest in the phenomena would know, a massive amount of sightings involve lights and not (visible) craft.
5. Lastly, though she discounts ball lightning, I'm not certain I can. Ball lightning is not well understood, and it was only fairly recently (2006) that modern science accepted it as existing at all when it was recreated in a lab.
From a phys.org article on ball lightning studies:
"[Scientist John] Lowke proposes that ball lightning occurs in houses and aeroplanes when a stream of ions accumulates on the outside of a glass window and the resulting electric field on the other side excites air molecules to form a ball discharge. The discharge requires a driving electric field of about a million volts.
So, seeing as two planes are in this report, and the east coast of the United States is, in general, a heavy traffic air corridor, is it possible that electrical discharge has built and somehow sustained itself in a pocket of air pressure and whatever other conditions it would need at 30,000 feet to exist? Perhaps. I don't think an answer to that is available until we understand the phenomenon of ball lightning more fully.
I also looked into NUFORC for similar sightings within this four day period from Tara's sighting to the Albany sighting. This is a map with all regional sightings reported to NUFORC between January 13th and 16th, 2020. Red indicates January 13th, blue indicates January 15th, and purple indicates January 16th. Oddly, there were no regional sightings reported to NUFORC on January 14th (though most of the country panicked and reported Starlink like it was War of the Worlds).
One other interesting note about these data points is that there does appear to be a clear corridor of activity. However, this is also a high traffic area as far as commercial flights go, and I am positive that most sightings in this area could easily be attributed to regular, mundane, misidentified aircraft (as long as you don't read the NUFORC reports, anyway).
I have reached out to Frontier, with no reply.
