By Kay Whatley, Editor
Across the United States each year, thousands of unidentified flying object (UFO) sightings are reported. UFO reports cover close encounters of various types, range from blinking lights in the sky to unusual aircraft to reports of contact.
Each month, hundreds of US UFO sightings are reported to either the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) or the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) — while there is overlap, some reports are only in one database or the other.
Numbers below are as reported to MUFON, which collects citizen reports and catalogs them by date, location, shape, and when reported.
- AL: Alabama — 5
- AK: Alaska — 2
- AZ: Arizona — 14
- AR: Arkansas — 1
- CA: California — 51
- CO: Colorado — 11 (incl. 2 over NORAD & Cheyenne Mountain)
- CT: Connecticut — 3
- DE: Delaware — 2
- FL: Florida — 19
- GA: Georgia — 7
- HI: Hawai’i — 0
- ID: Idaho — 3
- IL: Illinois — 7
- IN: Indiana — 9
- IA: Iowa — 0
- KS: Kansas — 2
- KY: Kentucky — 2
- LA: Louisiana — 6
- ME: Maine — 4
- MD: Maryland — 6
- MA: Massachusetts — 2
- MI: Michigan — 17
- MN: Minnesota — 7
- MS: Mississippi — 1
- MO: Missouri — 11
- MT: Montana — 4
- NE: Nebraska — 1
- NV: Nevada — 8
- NH: New Hampshire — 0
- NJ: New Jersey — 4
- NM: New Mexico — 9
- NY: New York — 22
- NC: North Carolina — 6
- ND: North Dakota — 0
- OH: Ohio — 8
- OK: Oklahoma — 5
- OR: Oregon — 9
- PA: Pennsylvania — 9
- RI: Rhode Island — 2
- SC: South Carolina — 3
- SD: South Dakota — 0
- TN: Tennessee — 12
- TX: Texas — 26
- UT: Utah — 3
- VT: Vermont — 1
- VA: Virginia — 2
- WA: Washington — 9
- DC: Washington, DC — 0
- WV: West Virginia — 3
- WI: Wisconsin — 2
- WY: Wyoming — 1
These are the reported sightings. Note that sightings are sometimes reported months or years later, and these numbers may go up over time.
To search the MUFON database and read details of reported accounts, or to report your own sighting of a flying object you could not identify, visit www.mufon.com. Membership is available for those interested in more intensive database searches and access to other MUFON resources.
To see the latest NUFORC reports — or their sighting reports going back a long, long time (millennia) — or report a UFO sighting, visit www.nuforc.org. (Note: NUFORC May reports may not be all-inclusive. As of this writing, lists only 20 reports for May and this number should increase.)
