Notable UFO Sightings in Washington State and the Spokane Area Presented by Retired U.S. Air Force Fighter Pilot Dan Nims with the Mutual UFO Network
SATURDAY, FEB 17: 3:10-4:30 PM @ THE SPOKANE GREAT OUTDOORS EXPO AT THE SPOKANE CONVENTION CENTER
(Presentations are free with your Expo ticket. Tickets are available here and come with free outdoor adventure deals for indoor climbing, paddleboarding, ziplining, and more while they last. Also available at the door the weekend of the event.) Check out the full schedule of presentations.
Presenter Dam Nims with WA MUFON will speak at the Spokane Great Outdoors Expo on Saturday, February 17 at 3:10 PM at the Spokane Convention Center. Tickets available online and at the door.
Have you ever seen lights in the night sky that you couldn’t explain? If so, you’re not alone according to presenter Dan Nims, who notes that there are thousands of reported UFO sightings in the U.S. each year. Nims is retired from the U.S. Air Force where he was a fighter pilot and test pilot. He became the Director of Test for the F-22 program and finally Director of Test Resources for the Air Force. He is now re-retired, and has been a member of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) since 2017 and WA MUFON Chief Investigator since 2018.
As a chief investigator for WA MUFON, Nims helps investigate around 200 UFO sightings reported in the Evergreen State each year but adds that there are many more sightings across the U.S. that are reported to other organizations and government agencies.
Nims had one UFO encounter back in his Airforce days but says he only had a casual interest in the subject until he read the book The Total Novices Guide to UFOs and then other books that got him hooked. In 2017, he attended his first MUFON symposium in Las Vegas. “I was quite surprised it wasn’t a bunch of kooks running around in Star Trek outfits,” he admits. “It was PhDs and astronomers, engineers and actually a couple of astronauts I had known from my test pilot days.” Nims was impressed enough by the credentials of the people he met to begin volunteering for MUFON.
Out of the hundreds of UFO sightings WA MUFON investigates each year, says Nims, around 75 percent of them can be explained. “Of that remaining 25 or 30 percent that we would classify as unknowns, a healthy majority of those are what we call LITS—lights in the sky—where somebody sees lights but can’t actually see any craft because it’s too dark or the lights are too bright.” Nims says many of these cases are classified as unidentified “because the lights are doing something no human-made lights can do. Going very fast or making instantaneous 90 degree turns or breaking up into eight lights or many lights coming together into one light. Lots of weird things that are legitimate cases.” The remaining 10-12 percent of reported sightings, he says, are of actual observed craft in the sky. “They can be spheres, triangles, saucers, cigar-shaped or Tic-Tac craft and some don’t meet any common description whatsoever.”
At his presentation at the Spokane Great Outdoors Expo on February 17, Nims will focus on high-profile and historic cases of UFO sightings in Washington State. Highlights of those reports include the 1947 sighting of a line of “saucer” like flying craft reported over the Cascade Mountains by pilot Kenneth Arnold, a sighting that led to the term “flying saucer” coming into use; sightings around Hanford, Wash., leading up to and during World War II; and other sightings including several large black triangle craft and other lights in recent years in eastern Washington.
Seating may fill up for this presentation at the Spokane Convention Center on Saturday, Feb. 17, so get your ticket to the Spokane Great Outdoors Expo online at Spokaneoutdoorexpo.com and show up early! Check out all of the other presentations at this year’s Expo here.
