How UFOs get investigated by MUFON

TRI-CITIES, Wash. -

In May a Congressional hearing held on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) trying to eliminate the stigma surrounding reports of unidentified objects in the sky. 

 A Pentagon program was recently established to look into UAPs and will start to look into the nearly 150 reports of since 2004. The reports were released in 2021 and only one could be explained.

Mutual UFO Network, or MUFON works privately to find out more about sightings reported on their website.

MUFON looks into every case reported on its website according to Dan Nims, Chief Investigator of the Washington chapter. He said around two hundred sightings get reported to the Washington chapter yearly.

The goal is to collect data on UFO sightings to help better understand what people are seeing according to Nims.

He said investigators look at things like flight radars, known meteors, and even Starlink data when trying to identify what the objects might be, and that 70% of cases close when investigators figure out what the object is.

According to MUFON, a newly published report ranks Washington as number one in the country for UFO sightings per capita.

MUFON will hold meetings Walla Walla at 7 P.M. and one Saturday at 1 P.M. in Kennewick.

"I frequently ask the question how many of you have seen a UFO and since it's a UFO meeting it's not uncommon to see a vast majority of the hands go up," Nims said. 

Frequently sightings occur at places like Hanford and other nuclear sites, and volcanic areas like Mount Rainier.

MUFON said one of the first sightings in Washington spotted at Hanford was described as a large orange oval object the size of three aircraft carriers.

In 1947 two well known sightings happened in Washington.

The first at Maury Island has a documentary with claims of UFOs that came down over the water of Puget Sound.

Nims said another at Mount Rainier in 1947 popularized the term flying saucer after a pilot described nine saucer like objects in the sky while flying.