...But, Sometimes, It Is Just the Weather and People's Imagination

In Conisholme, Lincolnshire, England last year, witnesses reported seeing a brilliantly-lighted UFO attacking a wind turbine farm with tentacles, causing a turbine to lose a blade which was dropped to the ground.

Here are some eyewitness reports...

1. County councilor for the area Robert Palmer said he had seen a “round, white light that seemed to be hovering”. Mr Palmer said: “I actually saw a white light – a round, white light that seemed to be hovering. “That is the only way I can explain it – it wasn’t a flare-like light – it was just round, white light with a slight red edge to it that seemed to be over the wind turbines.”

2. John Harrison, a local witness, described how he looked out of his landing window and saw a massive ball of light with tentacles going right down to the ground over the wind farm. He said: "It was huge. With the tentacles it looked just like an octopus."

3. Witness named as ‘Shelia’ commented, ‘I’m a very light sleeper and I didn’t hear or see a thing on Sunday night,’ said the 67 year old householder, ‘I hope that one day we will see aliens, but I doubt it will happen in that field. I’ve lived here for 20 years and nothing interesting has ever happened here. Except them building the wind farm, of course.’

4. Dorothy Willows, who lives a mile and a half from the crash site, commented: “The lights were moving across the sky towards the wind farm. Then I saw a low flying object. It was skimming across the sky towards the turbines.”

5. John Harrison, a local resident described looking at the farm out of his window and seeing “a massive ball of light with tentacles going right down to the ground”.

I should add this interesting detail...

6. Ecotricity, the Stroud, England-based power provider has recovered substantial wreckage from the site including the missing turbine blade (contrary to earlier reports of it being ‘missing’ from the site) and smaller fragments.

The following was my analysis, a version of which I e-mailed to the insurance carrier for the wind farm...

When we sit in our little homes in our little towns surround by trees and fences and so forth, we have one view of the environment and weather. We think, "That's what the weather is like," and we make a second mental jump: "That's what the weather is like in all environments."

But it doesn't really work that way.

When you have a 200 foot high structure isolated on a flat ocean or flat plain, we find that things are different. Isolated high objects can generate lightning in clear weather -- even under cloudless skies!

What is happening is that when air moves the air molecules rubbing against one another "steal" one another's electrons. Imbalances in the molecules in the air masses -- weight differences, differences in "shaking" speed, or Brownian motion velocity, cause imbalances in the mass which tend to feed on themselves -- heavier molecules which have had their electrons "stolen" from them end up on the bottoms of air masses, while lighter ones with too many electrons end up on top of the air mass.

So, the bottoms of turbulent air masses tend to be "electron deprived" and therefore electron hungry.

Normally, cities full of structures making the surface irregular bleed-off these electrical differences into the air constantly, so that in cities the imbalance is chronically addressed, so that city people don't get the chance to see lightning out of a clear sky because the electricity never has a chance to build up.

But out in the country or on the sea, things are different. If we sail a 100 foot high "tall ship" out into the sea, or put a 200 foot high wind turbine out on a flat plain, we have functionally erected an enormous lightning rod.

When we do that, the static charge of air masses and the difference between them and the ground suddenly become relevant, and people begin to see a phenomenon that they never knew existed.

St. Elmo's fire -- slow static build-up in a ship out on the sea, as the ship acts like a giant lightning rod, easily visible at night; and lightning without storm clouds overhead.

I think that that is what happened at the Conisholme Wind Farm.

Weather conditions and humidity were just right, one night. The air mass above the wind turbines began to slowly develop a charge different from that of the ground, as lighter molecules bumped against and stole electrons from heavier molecules in the air mass, and then zipped-up to the top of the air mass, leaving the bottom of the mass electron hungry.

Electrons in the ground beneath the turbines, attracted by the electron-hungry air mass above them, "rushed to the rescue" They gathered in the ground beneath the turbines, and rush up the turbine towers, through the hub, into the slowly-rotating blade which happened at that moment to be highest, and therefore closest to the electrically charged air mass.

As the turbine blades turned, tens of thousands of volts of static electricity rushed out of the blades turning down, and into the blades going up.

This happens again and again and again and again. The blades get hotter and hotter where they are narrowest -- at the neck near the hub.

Inside the blades, the air is also getting hotter and hotter -- and compressed.

As the electricity builds, the towers began to glow with St. Elmo's fire. The highest blade began to develop ball lightning. Voila -- a UFO -- the ball lightning -- with "tentacles," the surrounding towers glowing with St. Elmo's fire.

The UFO looked like it was moving as the blades move slowly.

Suddenly, BOOM! -- the super-heated neck of one of the fiberglass blades couldn't take the heat anymore, and split. Superheated compressed air in the blade rushed out, launching the blade like a rocket. WHOOSH! The blade rocketed from the wind farm at hundreds of miles per hour, glowing as it flew from heat of the electricity that had passed through it, and St. Elmo's fire.

The next morning, onlookers couldn't find the missing blade -- it was in someone's back yard, a mile away. So, initial reports were that the blade was missing.

Utility workers flying a helicopter spot the blade from the air. The utility did not want the public to know that their turbines can launch turbine blades like rockets at nearby homes, so they kept it hush-hush, and dispatched a truck in the wee hours of the morning to quietly retrieve that blade and drop it off at the bottom of the tower.

The utility, happy that the public is distracted by the UFO speculation, laughed at UFO reports in the press but actually included that as a possible cause in their subsaequent public analyses.

That analysis explains it all -- the UFO, the "tentacles," the UFO seen "skimming across the sky" toward the turbines -- it was actually the missing blade flying from the destroyed turbine -- and why the blade was first reported missing, but subsequently seen in plain sight at the bottom of the tower.