EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:   
   - A recent article has raised questions about the connection between   
     lightning and UFO sightings.   
   - We would expect there to be some connection with some types of UFO   
     sightings but not all. Maybe not even most.  The AI s/w I'm   
     developing picks Fireball and Sphere UFO types (as described by   
     NUFORC reports) as the ones most connected with lightning strikes in   
     the region during the same month.  But the connection is strong   
     only in a few states. In several more it is weak. But in most states   
     there seems to be no link.   
   - The AI further picks out those states showing a strong link (in UT   
     it explains 90+% of Fireball and "orb" sightings) is   
     precipitation. States with low precip in Dec and Jan and also low   
     variation in prec month to month are the states with a strong   
     connection between lighting and Fireball UFO sightings.   
      
      
   I noticed a recent piece in The Debrief on the connection between   
   lightning, specifically ball lightning, and at least some of the   
   observed UFO activity. Certainly some of the YT vids showing orbs   
   floating down mountainsides does suggest something not under the same   
   kind of control as giant dark pyramids tumbling around in the sky over   
   the Pentagon.   
      
   And many of us old enough will remember the relevant appendixes on the   
   Condon Report that linked some UFO reports with the enigmatic ball   
   lightning phenomenon, ironically itself having been viewed as a   
   fantasy only a matter of a couple decades before the Report came out.   
   One of the stories in the appendix in question related how a key   
   physicist was on a plane travelling to a conference to debunk the whole   
   idea of ball lightning when the plane he was travelling in was hit by   
   lightning and a fuzzy glowing ball proceeded to travel at least part   
   of the length of the isle. Sound shedding paper.   
      
   And similar if not the same phenomena is where I started my   
   exploration of UFO's with the "mountain lights" seen in parts of   
   Norway.  At the time I discovered the pattern of sightings had a very   
   strong climate link. As the years warmed the number of sightings were   
   predicted to grow less and less. And, surprise, I recently revisited   
   one website that had been promoting study of the lights to find it was   
   mostly abandoned with no-one answering emails; even college students   
   that had received degrees from projected related to recording the   
   sightings which apparently dropped to near 0 a few years back.   
      
   So it's worth trying to determine how many UFO sightings in N Am   
   "might" be related to lightning.   
      
   My database already has a large collection of datasets that relate to   
   US lightning storms. Over the past decades it seems such storms --   
   given commercial considerations -- have become an active area of   
   study and prediction.  So some data is now even not available for free   
   download.  But the NOAA maintains a set of data that record daily or   
   monthly number of lightning strikes using several different types of   
   instruments.  E.g. a network of radio stations listens out for   
   lightning-generated static.  Even GPS satellites can detect lighting   
   strikes -- after a fashion -- on the territory they fly over. There   
   are other methods.   
      
   So we can use this data and use it to predict various "types" of UFO   
   sighting and try to find which types of sighting are best predicted by   
   lightning activity, and how well.   
      
   I mostly use the NUFORC database and I do that here. These data   
   consist of details entered by observers via a web form. So all data is   
   highly questionable. :) Many sightings are entered years and sometimes   
   decades later, so expecting people to remember the date and time of a   
   signing from 20y ago is a tall order. In addition, the folks at NUFORC   
   also give each report a light once over and add in a couple   
   classification fields to each sighting. One is the "shape" field.   
   Oval, Triangle, Sphere, etc. are included in the list of shapes.  But   
   we can also search each sighting for keywords in the body of the text.   
   Appropriate to lightning or ball lightning is a keyword not included in   
   the official "shape" field -- the term "orb".   
      
   So we can go through each "type" of UFO sighting (incl the term "orb")   
   and decide in which states lightning seems to predict UFO activity of   
   that type within the state. We don't really expect lighting in TX to   
   be correlated in some interesting way against the totality of US UFO   
   sightings within a given month. But it might be informative of the   
   strength of the link to compare lightning in TX against UFO sightings   
   in TX with the word "orb" in the report. &ct.   
      
   So we can run all these regression models -- throw away all the   
   results that are not statistically significant using at least 2   
   different tests (essentially we have to be 99% sure the result cant   
   just be due to some lucky pattern in the particular data we're using)   
   and we can count up for each UFO type how many states of the US see a   
   link between lighting and those kinds of UFO sightings. Order from   
   largest to least.   
      
   UFO type	Number of states that see   
   		a strong link between lightning strikes   
   		and UFO sightings within each month   
   Fireball	13   
   Light		13   
   Circle		11   
   Sphere		11   
   Unknown		8   
   Cigar		7   
   Formation	7   
   Oval		6   
   Triangle	6   
   Changing	5   
   Disk		5   
   Other		5   
   orb		5   
   Diamond		4   
   Cylinder	3   
   Rectangle	2   
   Teardrop	2   
   Cone		1   
   Cross		1   
   Flash		1   
   Chevron		0   
   Egg		0   
      
   The "types" that start with the capital letters are the official   
   NUFORC sighting classification terms. The "orb" is our addition to   
   count reports that contain that word as " orb " or " orbs " (note the spaces).   
      
   At the top of the list we see "Fireball" UFO's seem to fit the bill as   
   a phenomenon at least partly related to some king of unusual   
   lightning science. "Light" UFO's too. It seems in 13 states there are   
   strong connections between lighting and the relevant UFO sighting types.   
      
   It also turns out to be the case in "most" states there is absolutely   
   no connection between lighting and any kind of UFO sighting.  There   
   seems to be some other element that is key to whether or not the 2   
   align at least some of the time. I suspect at this point it is   
   "elevation". Maybe at higher altitudes there is a stronger connection   
   that at MSL. We'll look at that in the future, depending on what the   
   Big Report in June says about UFO's and humanity's status in the universe. :)   
      
   But one funny thing we might note. "Triangle" UFO's seem to be related   
   to lightning too. How can a triangle be mistaken for some blob of   
   light that was created by a lightning bolt?   
      
   A second funny thing which may be key -- the "orb" UFO type seems to   
   be much less related to lightning than some classic UFO shapes.  How   
   can this be? "Orb" was supposedly the normal way people that saw a   
   ball lightning or similar phenomena should describe what they saw.   
   Yet it isn't.   
      
   The solution is likely to be -- our idea that links how widespread   
   lighting/UFO links are by counting states is the wrong metric to   
   decide how strong the link is. We need a new measure.   
      
   So the next thing we might try is using the average "explanation   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)