UFOs Over Newtown?

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

UFOs Over Newtown?

LeeAnn Prete Browett and one of the fateful balloons

By Nick Keppler
Fair Field Weekly
1-25-11

On Saturday, Jan. 15, at 8:19 p.m., the Newtown Police Department received a few calls about mysterious lights floating above the Sandy Hook neighborhood. Officers in the two cruisers that were sent were as baffled as the first set of witnesses. The orange orbs came in waves of four or five and flickered silently in the night sky. Police called the nearby Oxford-Waterbury Airport and were told no aircrafts had taken off recently.

A family passing through, en route back to New York City, saw the lights, and the wife took out a Canon S95, recorded some grainy footage and (as is inevitable these days) posted it on YouTube. The title of the video: “UFO over Newtown, CT. January, 15, 2011.”

Project Blue Book, the 1950s-and-’60s-era U.S. Air Force investigation of the phenomenon of “unidentified flying objects,” concluded that 90 percent of sightings had an earthly explanation, and the “UFO over Newtown” did not prove to be one of the elusive 10 percent.

So what was it? A wave of swamp gas? A lenticular cloud? A weather balloon? It seems it was a solemn family remembrance.