UFO Sightings in New York - a short study

Of all USA states, New York state ranks fifth for a simple count of UFO sightings in the *U* UFO Database, 333 listings as of March 2006.
NY ranks 11th for sightings per unit area.

Long Island shows a much denser distribution of sightings per unit area than the rest of New York State as a whole.

Sightings are mapped in colors for three eras: 109 events from the 1800s through 1959 show as Blue dots. 99 more from 1960 through 1974 are in Violet, and another 125 in Green are from 1975 to the present.

The geographical center of these sightings is at 74:58W by 41:56N, near Cooks Falls, NY in Delaware County where not much else happens.

A similar map covering a much wider area is here: UFO: Northeast States.

<= Daily Histogram of New York Sightings.

Here sightings for all years are combined and given as daily counts to show seasonal variation.

The busiest month is August with 54 listings here, over double the average of the other eleven months ( 25.4 )

The busiest weekday is Thursday (58) compared to an average of 46 for the other 6 days of the week.

Sightings tend toward residental and small town settings, with relatively few in metropolitan areas.
See this page for other state statistics:
USA State UFO Sightings Counts

See similar studies for California Ohio Texas Pennsylvania Florida Washington Mass + CT & RI New Mexico Michigan Illinois & Indiana Missouri Oregon Carolinas Arizona

<= 50-Year Graph of New York UFO Sightings.

The busiest years for New York state are as follows:

1952 (24) 1953 (11) 1956 (13)
1957 (15) 1958 (9) 1960 (8)
1964 (8) 1965 (10) 1966 (25)
1967 (16) 1974 (8) 1976 (8)
1983 (17) 1984 (20) 1989 (8)
1995 (9)

Years not shown have 7 or fewer listings.

1966 scores high here, a fairly slow year elsewhere. Notably absent is 1947 with only 3 sightings listed. Instead we find good numbers in 1983 and 1984, the slowest years in a long drought of sightings worldwide.

The nine events in 1995 are widely scattered statewide, from Marion, NY in Wayne County to Farmingdale on Long Island.

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