While the regional press echoed of estimates from ufology associations which say there would have been 200 to 400 ufo observation cases in Alsace, this case is one among the 3 only cases of observation reported by the regional daily newspaper "L'Alsace" in its web archives, one of the 2 other case clearly being a misinterpretation.
Note that the article does not tell us that the witnesses were fooled, only the title suggests this. It seems they said "a thing with a shape like of a flying saucer" and not "a flying saucer."
It is regrettable that this kind of distinction is not clearly solved... It is so much more "politically correct" to imply that people who see lenticular clouds take them for flying saucers.
By the way, one can wonder how a lenticular cloud can move "quickly", change direction "brutally", and flickers "with regularity".
MISCELLANEOUSS:A CLOUD FOR A UFO.Colmar Edition - Sunday, September 20, 1998. Emotion run, Friday evening around 08:00pm, in the area of Neuf-Brisach where several witnesses saw in the sky a curious "thing with the shape of a flying saucer". The gendarmerie received several phone calls, emanating from Neuf-Brisach, Biesheim, Kunheim, Artzenheim, to announce the phenomenon. Some witnesses photographed it or videotaped it. According to various descriptions, it was a compact mass of ovoidal form, of rubbery aspect, which emitted regular flickerings, advanced quickly in the sky and abruptly changed direction. It was in fact a large lenticular cloud which did not cause any particular observation by of the services in charge of skywatch who consider this kind of the phenomenon is natural and frequent. This kind of cloud, rather fugacious, is formed by parallel redundancies of reliefs which refer on the high layers of the atmosphere. The flickerings which were perceived being only the reverberation of the sun in the stacking of the clouds. |
| Location: | Artzenheim, Department 68, Haut-Rhin |
|---|---|
| Date: | 08:00 p.m., September 18, 1998 |
| Number of witnesses: | Several |
| Type: | Flying disc. |
| Duration: | ? |
Several witnesses saw a phenomenon which resembled a compact mass of ovoidal form, of rubbery aspect, which emitted regular flickerings, moving quickly in the sky and abruptly changed direction.
