I have been a long-time viewer of the night sky, and I am very familiar with the twinkle of a star. I know that one does not see the color green when looking upward, as stars cannot emit green light.
At 6:20 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 11, I was coming home and noticed a green light in the airspace above our garage. Immediately I pulled out my phone and snapped a photo of it, it was moving westward. I went inside thinking more about it; I researched reports of the recent New Jersey drones and determined that I had encountered a similar aircraft, with these being smaller than the reported “SUV-sized drones” in New Jersey.
I mentioned it to friends on our nightly voice call and they found it bizarre. After a few hours and some deliberation, I found it worth looking outside again the following evening. I did just that at 8:27 p.m. and saw possibly more than one in the air above my -living quarters. They were still in the air 20 minutes later, I grabbed a few photos, and went indoors to carry on with my evening.
The moon rose full on the night of Wednesday, Feb. 12. It was extremely cold, and so silent you could hear a deer relieve itself a mile away. It was 2:48 a.m., meaning the date was actually the 13th.
I decided to take the garbage cans up the driveway, underneath the full moon as I am an astro-enthusiast and have been since I was a child. I was still on a call with my friend at the time. I said, “Let’s see if I see those drones again.” I stepped out the door and looked up, and I saw another one.
I memorized my position and took note of the angle I was watching the drone at. I carried on with taking the garbage out and, as I turned around to look back at the drone, it looked to be in a different spot. Curiosity-driven, I looked up toward a different spot in the sky and noticed two more. The whole time, I am taking photos of not only the full moon but also the drones. It was 3 a.m. when I got back inside, and I was still on the phone with my friend discussing what I had just seen.
As we were talking, I was looking out the window southward, and noticed another drone in the air hovering. He asked if I could turn my camera on. I said “Yeah, I don’t know that you’ll be able to see anything though,” and I turned it on. My friend described being able to see the green blinking light. Someone who doesn’t pay much attention to the night sky would easily mistake it for a star (until they realize that you do not see green in the night sky unless it is an aircraft). I had my camera on in this call with my friend, holding my phone as still as I could.
At this point it is 4 a.m. and we are tired. We hung up and, as I was about to go to bed, I thought to call the non-emergency county law enforcement line. Obviously it is far too late in the evening to do that, so I gauged whether or not it would be justifiable to call 911. I deemed this worthy enough, and let them know that there are suspected drones flying in the airspace above my home and the fields nearby. They said they’d send someone out and I went to bed.
The following day, I was still thinking of these encounters and grabbed a pair of binoculars in preparation for moonrise. After taking photos at the Kimball girls’ basketball game, I came home only to see another drone in the air above the garage, almost in the same position that the first one I encountered was in.
I drove down the driveway and came to a halt when the light on the drone was lined up perfectly with the roof line of the garage. I didn’t want to get out of the car because it was so cold, so I turned down all accessory lighting in the car and covered the dash with a napkin so no remaining light would leak. My plan was to hold as still as -possible and take note that, if the light were to disappear, the drone was moving. I sat there, still as could be, and the light disappeared. It was at that moment I thought to contact law enforcement right away. I called and let them know I had been seeing drones in the airspace surrounding me.
It should here be noted that I did not witness the drones during daylight hours, and that I could not hear anything when I saw them.
I suggest that our readers in surrounding areas remain at ease until we receive specific word from law enforcement. We did not get a response from administrative offices of local law enforcement in time for this issue of the newspaper, we will be keeping in contact with them. It is not currently known whether or not these sightings are related to the New Jersey drone sightings.
As NBC News writer Doha Madani reported “Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, now says many of those drones [in New Jersey] were authorized and known by the government. ‘After research and study, the drones that were flying over New Jersey in large numbers were authorized to be flown by the FAA for research and various other reasons,” Leavitt said at a briefing Tuesday. Leavitt said that the issue grew worse ‘due to curiosity,’ as some of the drones also belonged to hobbyists and private citizens. ‘This was not the enemy,’ she told reporters.”
The photos I took look very similar to those over New Jersey.
I’ll continue to look into this until we hear something definitive from authorities.
UPDATE: We have since received word from Jon Lentz, Captain of the Stearns County Police Department. Lentz says “We are unaware of any reason to be alarmed, the sheer number of drones out there are higher than folks imagine. We haven’t developed any concern.”