News Radio 1310 AM and 96.1 FM Website Twin Falls, ID News Radio 1310 KLIX Radio, a Townsquare Media station, has the best news coverage in Twin Falls, Idaho. Why Places like Idaho and Washington Record so Many UFO Sightings By Bill Colley, 4 hours ago There’s a simple explanation why America’s northwest has more UFO sightings than other parts of the country, and perhaps more than anywhere else in the world. There’s more open sky, and more people in the backcountry looking at the open sky. That’s according to Nick Pope, the former defense minister for the United Kingdom. His own government has been studying unidentified objects for decades. Pope says our own Vice President appears to believe there’s much more to the sightings. The Englishman made a Halloween appearance on Fox and Friends First. You can watch the interview by clicking here . Guys in Dark Suits Try to Confuse Us Our own government won’t officially use the term UFO. It prefers UAP, for unexplained aerial phenomena. I always look at such bureaucratic efforts as a means to deflect from the conversation. The government changes the words in hopes of knocking you off your game from the start. Still, I’m not sure if I’m a believer. I’ve never seen a UFO. Or not that I’m aware of, and I’ve driven a lot of our roads (including those in desolate reaches) at all hours of the night and day. Due to the nature of my work, I listen to a lot of Coast to Coast, which covers these events almost every night. It would be more credible if the people who call or join the program as guests didn’t often sound like they belong in a padded cell. But it’s entertaining, and I believe harmless. Good People Claim to See Objects Above What I can’t explain are credible people I know who’ve had some wildly unique experiences, including a close friend who was an academic, and among the most honest guys I’ve ever known. So, I’ll keep an open mind, even if I don’t have any personal evidence. LOOK: The states with the most UFO sightings For each state, we’ve also included details of famous UFO sightings in that state. Of note is that almost three-quarters of all UFO sighting reports in the United States occur between 4 p.m. and midnight , and tend to peak between 9 and 10 p.m. Food for thought next time you're out scoping for alien life. Keep reading to see which states have had the most UFO sightings. Gallery Credit: Nicole Caldwell & Matt Albasi Canva #51. District Of Columbia — UFO sightings: 87 Throughout the month of July 1952, a series of sightings known as the “Big Flap” put Washington D.C. residents into a panic. It began July 19: Repeated radar blips and sightings of lights moving at irregular speeds and trajectories (unusual enough to rule out shooting stars or aircraft) inspired the U.S. Air Force to send fighter jets into the sky to intercept what was assumed to be enemy aircraft and possibly a Soviet-led invasion. The radar signals disappeared each time jet fighters approached and reappeared when they moved away. The signals returned the following week, two more F-94 jets gave chase, and the blips vanished again. One jet pilot claimed to see a light in the distance, but couldn't close in on it. The government ruled it a “temperature inversion” to explain the mystery away. Canva #50. North Dakota — UFO sightings: 192 Veteran World War II B-25 fighter pilot George F. Gorman had a 27-minute sky encounter with a white ball of light over Fargo, North Dakota, on Oct. 1, 1948. Known as the “Gorman Dogfight,” Gorman saw what he described as a flying disk with clear edges and many bright lights that he pursued for the better part of half an hour. Gorman attempted to make contact with the craft, which dodged Gorman's advances at speeds in excess of 600 miles per hour. His story was verified by two air traffic controllers and another pilot flying in Fargo that night. Canva #49. Wyoming — UFO sightings: 266 Two triangular UFOs with three blue lights were spotted over Cheyenne's countryside on March 4, 2019, just a few weeks after almost a dozen multicolored lights were recorded traveling north over Riverton at various altitudes. Local residents' tendencies to look skyward is perhaps best illustrated in Green River: When a comet crashed into Jupiter in 1994, Wyoming's Green River city council turned its local airstrip into a refuge for potentially fleeing Jovians. The "Greater Green River Intergalactic Spaceport" has to date only shown evidence of terrestrial life . Canva #48. South Dakota — UFO sightings: 272 During the evenings of Aug. 5 and 6, 1953, nearly four dozen civilians in the Bismarck area and multiple Military Air Defense system personnel at the Ellsworth Air Force Base reported a red, glowing light making sweeping movements across the sky. The light was further detected on radar by the Air Defense System. Similar sightings were reported earlier in western North and South Dakotas. The extensive documentation by the Air Force makes the Ellsworth Case among the most significant UFO sightings in American history. Canva #47. Delaware — UFO sightings: 294 Delaware may rank low on how many UFO sightings it gets, but where it falls short on documentation it makes up for with imagination. The state is home to two prefab, UFO-shaped structures created in the ‘60s by a Finnish architect who thought the design could provide a solution to the housing shortage on Earth. Many UFO sightings in Delaware center on odd light formations and shapes in the sky and, in February 2019, a possible spacecraft with multicolored lights being pushed out of the airspace by five (presumably terrestrial) planes. Canva #46. Rhode Island — UFO sightings: 448 Two of the most iconic flying saucer photos of the ‘60s were snapped in 1967 in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. The first, on June 10, was taken by Harold A. Trudel, who pulled his car over in East Woonsocket in order to wait for a UFO sighting (several of which he claimed to have already experienced in the area). The seven images he captured over the course of five minutes have long been disputed. The other photo was captured on June 18 and bears striking similarities to the craft another man, George Adamski, claimed to have captured on film in 1952 (which one German scientist said was nothing more than a faked photo using a surgical lamp). Canva #45. Alaska — UFO sightings: 448 Eighteen-year-old Adonus Baugh on March 19, 2019, videotaped a still-unidentified glowing object apparently falling from the Anchorage, Alaska, sky. Another Anchorage resident captured photos of the same mysterious object, which a spokeswoman from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson said did not resemble any aircraft from the base. Canva #44. Vermont — UFO sightings: 459 Among Vermont's most famous UFO stories is the Buff Ledge Abduction, in which, on Aug. 7, 1968, four UFOs appeared over Lake Champlain and allegedly abducted two camp counselors in Vermont. The lights from that encounter were reported by multiple witnesses. Canva #43. Nebraska — UFO sightings: 468 One of Nebraska's most well-known UFO stories was turned into a comic book in 2019, aptly titled “An Alien Encounter.” The book illustrates a 1967 eyewitness account from Nebraska State Patrolman Herbert Schirmer, who saw what he assumed to be a tractor-trailer but which turned out to be a UFO. Under hypnosis, Schirmer recalled being abducted and shown how the spacecraft worked. Canva #42. Hawaii — UFO sightings: 495 Two Harvard astronomers in 2017 released a draft paper about 'Oumuamua (Hawaiian for “scout” or “messenger”), a cigar-shaped UFO spotted with the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope at the Haleakala Observatory in Hawaii in October of that year. The paper suggests the spinning craft—roughly a quarter-mile long and with no detectable tail—may have been a sign of alien life from well outside our solar system. Canva #41. Mississippi — UFO sightings: 537 Two fishermen on the Pascagoula River in 1975 claimed to have been abducted by aliens. While Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker's story was met with cynicism at the time, three more witnesses came forward in 2019 to substantiate the claims. Parker, who died in 2011, at the time assumed the blue light on the water meant cops had shown up to kick the men off the property. Then, he said, he noticed the lights were coming from above. According to the story, three aliens without legs injected the men with a sedative, abducted them, and performed physical examinations aboard the spacecraft before releasing the men back along the river. Canva #40. West Virginia — UFO sightings: 621 The Green Bank Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia, is a premier location for scientists who make it their work to study extraterrestrial life (OK, and star-mapping, supernovas, and other, more generalized scientific research) by documenting energy waves from hundreds of lightyears away into computers via giant radio telescope. With many signals so faint they're easily drowned out by any ambient noise, these scientists abide by the National Radio Quiet Zone, a code of science that bars normal everyday tech devices so they can conduct their work without interference. Canva #39. Montana — UFO sightings: 717 Minor-league baseball team manager Nick Mariana in 1950 captured two silver crafts spinning in mid-air over Great Falls, Montana, on his 16-mm camera. A governmental panel was gathered in 1953 to review Mariana's footage, other U.S. Air Force UFO data, and a second short film of a sighting in Utah. The panel concluded in its report that Mariana’s images were the result of sunlight reflecting off off Air Force interceptors—and that the Utah footage showed light glinting off seagulls in flight. Canva #38. Louisiana — UFO sightings: 763 For visitors to Louisiana who have a hankering for supernatural encounters, the Abita Mystery House in Abita Springs is a must-stop—particularly for its UFO crash site. Shreveport’s proximity to the Barksdale Air Force Base translates to plenty of UFO sightings , as military exercises and tests are commonly misconstrued by the civilian population. Canva #37. Arkansas — UFO sightings: 788 Arkansas’ history with UFOs goes back at least to April 20, 1897. Railroad conductor James Hooton claimed to be hunting in Homan when he came upon an otherworldly airship and chatted with its bespectacled pilot and crew. Hooton described the craft as cylindrical, with wheels and a horizontal blade above it that moved by compressed air. Canva #36. Kansas — UFO sightings: 795 The Boeing B-47 Stratojet was a highly advanced, long-range, six-engined bomber introduced in 1951 to fly at extremely high altitudes and subsonic speeds in order to completely evade enemy aircraft—which is why it was so odd when, in 1957, an Air Force RB-47 was followed for 700 miles by an unidentified craft over Kansas and on through Missouri and Texas. Six years later, the radar of another RB-47 captured a radar blip followed by a bright blue light that was corroborated by the pilot and crew. Canva #35. Maine — UFO sightings: 826 One of Maine's most famous alien encounters is the Allagash Abduction of 1976. Four men on a camping trip in the Allagash Wilderness Waterway on Aug. 20, 1976, claimed they were abducted by aliens . Years after the incident, all four men were put under hypnosis and interviewed about the abduction. All four stories matched identically. Canva #34. Iowa — UFO sightings: 833 One of the most famous accounts of alien life in Iowa never actually happened. In the opening of Robert A. Heinlein's 1951 novel “The Puppet Masters,” government agents investigate an alien ship outside Grinnell, Iowa. Canva #33. New Hampshire — UFO sightings: 863 Betty and Barney Hill's 1961 alien abduction along Route 3 in Lancaster, New Hampshire, remains one of the most highly publicized stories of alien contact in the world. Under hypnosis, the couple independently recalled being kidnapped, medically examined, and released by bald-headed aliens with oblong eyes in a cigar-shaped, floating craft. Today, believers can visit a 50th-anniversary plaque commemorating the abduction along the roadside near Lincoln. Canva #32. Alabama — UFO sightings: 962 A woman in 1989 reported an unusual light in the sky in Fyffe, Alabama; her report was followed up later by area police who claimed to see a large UFO flying in total silence overhead. The resulting excitement led more than 4,000 people to descend on the tiny town. No sightings were reported by the crowds, perhaps because of overcast skies and a light rain. Source: https://www.newsbreak.com/news-radio-1310-am-and-96-1-fm-520870/4324360228338-why-places-like-idaho-and-washington-record-so-many-ufo-sightings