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BIZARRE SIGHTS SEEN IN THE SKIES ABOVE NORTH WALES IN THE PAST YEAR
IT was a strange old year, 2022, with multiple Prime Ministers, a cost-ofliving crisis and winter World Cup. And the weird sights seen in the skies above North Wales were no different.
From UFO clouds to an ‘Audi R8’ in the sky, there were plenty of weird things spotted in the skies – including a spinning disk and star-like object moving quickly through the sky.
As we begin 2023, we’ve rounded up the stranger things spotted above North Wales:
The UFO clouds over Gwynedd: Keen-eyed North Walians spotted some bizarre happenings to clouds around Gwynedd.
The clouds took on an unusual UFO-like shape and were spotted over several locations.
Resident Damien Hughes saw what looked like a mini tornado taking shape above Llanberis.
Meanwhile, over Dinorwic Quarry, Leo Lord had a better view of the true scale of the clouds.
The Met Office said that we did need not worry though, as these weren’t aliens popping down for a stroll in the Welsh hills.
They were in fact a strange phenomena that happen around the world, though less commonly so in Britain.
They are known as lenticular clouds. They form when the air is stable and winds blow across hills and mountains from the same or similar direction at different heights through the troposphere.
They look a lot like the traditional shape of flying saucers in science fiction, and real lenticular clouds are believed to be one of the most common explanations for UFO sightings across the world.
The ‘Audi R8’ bouncing through the sky: Back in July 2022 a bright white sphere of light was captured “bouncing” across the North Wales sky.
The object was filmed flying over Colwyn Heights by garage owner Matthew Norbury, who referred to it as a “Audi R8 shaped object”.
His footage showed it hurtling through the atmosphere above North Wales before making a sudden change in direction.
It was believed it could have been a fireball meteor, but the sudden change of direction made it quite unusual.
The Astronomy Stack Exchange site said that while meteorites can “travel in all directions”, the earth’s gravity will pull them straight down towards the surface.
Sightings of fireball meteors are reportedly rare, even though several thousand of fireball magnitude occur in the Earth’s atmosphere every day, according to the International Meteor Organisation.
The sighting has not been recorded anywhere else and the ukmeteornetwork had no records of any meteorite sightings across the UK at the time it was spotted.
To date, what exactly Mr Norbury saw remains unexplained.
The official sightings:
Two official sightings were recorded in January last year by experts working for UFO Identified.
While neither of these sightings were photographed, they are both logged as potential sightings.
On January 12 at 7.30pm, a spinning aluminium-like circular disk was seen in the sky over Llandudno, Conwy emitting various colours and moving for around two minutes before disappearing.
A few days later on January 18 at 7am in Buckley, a bright orange starlike object was stationary for a few minutes before moving vertically and flying out of view.
The group monitor all UFO sightings operate online to fill the gap in current UK UFO data and information gathering. The team work to identify official unexplained sightings, clearing away any where a perfectly terrestrial explanation is available, making any they do class as UFOs all the more mysterious.