wweek.com
A Recent Report of Strange Lights Illuminates a Longer History of UFO Sightings in the Pacific Northwest
On December 7, a sighting over the Willamette Valley involved pilots from United Airlines, Horizon Air, and a Life Flight Medevac plane reporting a red circular object moving in a corkscrew while radar showed nothing, with an air traffic control recording capturing the controller instructing crews to maneuver to avoid the unidentified object; Horizon Air Flight 2207's pilot rejected the satellite explanation, while Medevac pilot Joe Buley noted it differed from satellites he had seen; this event sits within Pacific Northwest UFO lore dating back to Kenneth Arnold's 1947 report and Paul and Evelyn Trent's 1950 McMinnville photographs, whose Life magazine coverage fueled debates between skeptics and believers and helped embed the topic in regional culture, including UFO festivals in McMinnville and Chehalis and a Royal Canadian Mint coin commemorating a 1970 sighting in British Columbia; the recent episode is notable for multiple professional observers but lacks radar corroboration, underscoring the enduring allure and uncertainty surrounding unidentified anomalous phenomena in the region.
