Location of Sighting: Yolo County, California (Sacramento Area)
Date of Sighting: April 25, 2018
Time of Sighting: 5 to 8:30 PM PDT
PHOTO OF STATIONARY OBJECT SEEN HOVERING TO 2.5 HOURS.
Description: I believe that I have photos and a video of what is a UFO to me. I researched weather balloons and to my knowledge none of them stay in one spot for more than a few seconds at best. What I have to show sat in 1 spot for at least 2 and a 1/2 hours until it disappeared. I do not know how long it had been sitting there, but I’m quite confident it was not a weather balloon the way it acted. I researched weather balloons and to my knowledge none of them stay in one spot for more than a few seconds at best. What I have to show sat in 1 spot for at least 2 and a 1/2 hours until it disappeared. The photos and video I have are in daylight so it’s not hard to get an opinion of it. I’m just Curious if anybody else is curious.
Additional Comments From Witness: I very much understand that’s what it may have been. I tried researching high pressure balloons, but didn’t spend too much time investigating where or when one may have been up. I couldn’t see anything hanging from it either, but they could be different than I know of internally now. My sighting was on the 25th of April 2018. I noticed it at 5 PM at an altitude that it stayed at until 8:30 PM going a bit side to side up and down at a pace hard to notice movement until it was a distance noticeably away from where it was first off. I’m in Yolo County, California and it was straight north. Since I don’t know the object for size I cannot estimate an altitude, but looking at it it from ground in between fingers would be a short grain of rice. The picture is from my phone looking through my binoculars. To be honest it didn’t look high enough for a balloon, but I may be wrong. It never got further away either even when I saw it disappear.
Note: I suspect that the witness saw a high altitude balloon. These balloons get quite large and can be seen even when they are flying at 50 to 60 thousand feet. However, the suspended instrumentation would likely not be visible.
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I took a close look at the object and it did look like there was something hanging from the bottom. If that is taken into account, I think it was a balloon too.
If it was a balloon how can you explain it remaining stationary? Winds at altitude can be extreme (i.e. jet stream). I just don’t think “weather balloon” explains this one.
My report says that the object in the photo could be a high altitude balloon not a weather balloon. A check of winds aloft shows that winds were only 20 to 25 knots at high altitudes and they were from the SSW. The witness saw the object to the north. Therefore the object could have been moving slowly away from him. He did say that it disappeared.
I agree that this is a high altitude balloon. It appears to be flattening out and has some transparency. If you zoom in you can see a partially visible pixelated line on the bottom which would be the instrument package cable. It should be possible to find the source of the balloon. When these are seen it’s important to watch for as long as it may take for the balloon to explode if possible. If you take your eyes off of it you will miss the explosion. If your video camera is on a stationary mount you can track it’s slow movement and catch the explosion. I have seen and recorded this many times. UFO’s are real > just not this time.