Cigar over Olympia, WA

The report, as filed

Saw my first ever UFO today, February 23, 2015, at 11 a.m. Pacific Time. By UFO, I mean Unidentified Floating Object – it was not flying – had no wings, no tail, no rotors. There was no sound, though as far away as it was, even if it had been an airplane I might not have heard it. There was no condensation trail behind it. The movement of the cigar-shaped white object was so slow that it appeared to be simply floating along at perhaps about 30-40 mph. There’s a possibility it may have been a drone – I’ve not seen all the types of drones the Military has these days, and there is a Base nearby, so who knows? It could have been ours, but maybe it wasn’t. I don’t know. Here’s what happened. I had just pulled out of the Post Office parking lot on Jefferson Street in Olympia, Washington, and turned right (north). After one block Jefferson Street makes a curve to the NW and as I was looking ahead during the curve (first gorgeous blue sky day we’ve had in a while) a white cylindrical shape in the distant sky caught my attention. As a cloud watcher I am often looking at the sky, and this object caught my attention as it did not look like a normal airplane. It was long, cylindrical, no wings, tail or rotors, no windows as far as I could tell. It was hard to tell how far away it was – I would guess perhaps anywhere from 1.5 to 2 miles away. Elevation (guessing again) may have been 0.5 to one mile high. It’s really hard to tell as there was nothing to triangulate it with. I am a pilot, though I haven’t flown in years, and I’ve sailed across the Pacific Ocean from Sausalito, CA, to Hawaii, and hiked many wilderness trails alone for up to three weeks at a stint, so I’m used to seeing unusual things, but never anything like this before. As I was driving on Jefferson and it became Adam Street, I decided to watch it as it was so intriguing, so I pulled over to the sidewalk in front of a yellow fire hydrant (there was nowhere else to park) and watched it for perhaps 3-5 minutes before I couldn’t see it anymore. Here’s what it did during those minutes. From my viewpoint it was to my WNW, and was headed south, maybe a tweak to the southwest, moving very slowly, silently, for about one minute of my watch time, when suddenly it veered sharply to its right – due west – so now all I could see was the dot of its circumference. The whiteness of the object was getting dimmer as it moved further west, and suddenly I noticed a bright pomegranate colored flash below it to the south, then another less brilliant flash a little further away, then a third even dimmer and further still away. They were like light flashes, nothing exploding, not flares, and were all in a single Southern and lower trajectory from the craft. That was bizarre, then a few seconds later the craft made an abrupt turn and was longwise to my view again, pointing south. It seemed to just hover there for maybe ten seconds, not proceed further south. Then it abruptly turned West again and within a few seconds there was another brilliant flash off the side of the craft – a brilliant whitish green electric colored flash – white on the far side, greener closer to the craft. That flash was fan shaped, different that the burst of round light previously seen. The fanned-out part of the white-green flash was away from the craft, while the narrow part of the fan-shape was right near the craft. I kept watching and it got harder and harder to see, as it was moving slowly further away. I started up the truck and drove over to a parking area on Capitol Lake, got out and continued looking for it, but didn’t see it again. Lots of people were out walking around the lake, and after maybe an hour of me walking around it slowly while still searching the sky, I finally got back to the truck, drove to do a quick errand, then decided to drive back to where I had originally seen it. I took photos of the location, made a quick video, got back in the truck and was about to drive away when I saw something that almost looked like the same white cigar shape again – Same location in the sky – only this time it was higher and harder to see than it had been the first time. I watched it closely but it disappeared as it headed south much more quickly than the first one – within maybe ten seconds – due to its higher elevation and distance from me – not to its speed, as it was still slow. There is an airport to the south of Olympia and I frequently see low flying planes coming in on approach, but that flight pattern is different than where these objects were flying. These were too high for approach and way too far west. The best I can figure is they were above West Olympia and the southernmost shores of Puget Sound heading southwest and west which would take them (or at least the first one) over Black Lake and perhaps on over to the Capitol State Forest. Don’t know what they were, but I do know they were not planes, helicopters or any other craft I am familiar with.

Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #117465). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.