Category:

Koi UFO Video 091: Armada of UFOs over Carmichael, California (2011)

[DEBUNKED] Koi UFO Video 091, which lasts approximately 10 minutes, appears to show a mass of white objects in a blue sky. The video was first uploaded by Nolan Jorgensen in on 13 August 2011 with the title "UFO ? Mass Sighting" and was accompanied by a description which stated that the sighting took place "around 7pm" over his home in Carmichael, California (near Sacramento, California).  

The original copy of the video had over 400,000 views as at March 2015.  A further copy was uploaded on 11 March 2015 with the title "Armada of UFOs caught in daytime sky in California" (and no indication that it had been filmed several years earlier...) was circulated widely on social media websites such as Facebook and obtained over 90,000 views in the first few days after this copy was posted on Youtube.

In fact, as detailed below, the video is speeded up footage of a mass of balloons released from the Carmichael Park on 13 August 2011. Strings from some of the balloons are clearly visible at various points in the footage (with screen shots included below).  The person that filmed the balloons, Nolan Jorgensen, himself subsequently confirmed with Carmichael Park that there was a release of balloons during a memorial at Carmichael Park that afternoon.  

 

Sections below:

1. The relevant video

2. Stories and claims relating to this video

3. The real background to this video

4. Relevant online discussions

 

 

1. The relevant video

Koi UFO Video 091 lasts approximately 10 minutes. It appears to show a mass of white objects in a blue sky. 

Screen shots from the video are included below for ease of identification:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. Stories and claims relating to this video

The video was first uploaded by Nolan Jorgensen in on 13 August 2011 with the title "UFO ? Mass Sighting" and was accompanied by a description which stated that the sighting took place "around 7pm" over his home in Carmichael, California (near Sacramento, California).  While his original description did not expressly give a date, in a subsequent comment he stated it was filmed on 13 August 2011 "at 7pm Pst".

The original copy of the video had over 400,000 views as at March 2015.  A further copy was uploaded on 11 March 2015 with the title "Armada of UFOs caught in daytime sky in California" (and no indication that it had been filmed several years earlier...) was circulated widely on social media websites such as Facebook and obtained over 90,000 views in the first few days after this copy was posted on Youtube.

Nolan Jorgensen is pictured below:

 

Few people that commented on the video appear to have read the description which Nolan Jorgensen wrote to accompany his video, including the fact that the footage was speeded up:

 

 

 

3. The real background to this video

In fact, this video is speeded-up footage of a mass of balloons released from the Carmichael Park on 13 August 2011.

Strings from some of the balloons are clearly visible at various points in the footage (with screen shots included below). The string is considerably more visible in the moving video images so I recommend watching the sections from which these screen shots are taken in order to see the strings in all their glory (just after the 1 minutes mark and again just after the 2 minute mark).  

Furthermore, the person that filmed the balloons, Nolan Jorgensen, himself subsequently confirmed with Carmichael Park that there was a release of balloons during a memorial at Carmichael Park early that evening.  

Upon the original posting of the video in 2011, comments were extremely polarised.  Some considered it obvious the footage showed balloons, others considered it equally obvious the footage showed UFOs or, in a unusually high proportion of comments, demons.  Faced with (repeated) suggestions by various people that the videos showed balloons, Nolan Jorgensen originally denied this possible explanation for his footage. For example, he responded to one relatively early comment as follows :

"See you think your Smart but I called the news and asked questions about balloon being Released and it against the law to release that many balloons it break big time EPA laws you can go to jail here where i live. It would have to be a government or state function with a permit. And there was nothing in the News paper or TV". 

Some websites include bald assertions that the video shows balloons released during a Family Fun Fest at Carmichael Park that day.  However, details of the Omni Youth Programs's Family Fun Fest which can be found online suggest that it took place at 10am to 3pm, thus probably too early to explain the relevant footage.

 

Nolan Jorgensen has stressed this timing issue in relation to the Fun Fest.  In one of the comments he wrote on Youtube in relation to his video he stated : "As for the Festival if they did I'm sure it would have been early in the day since it was for children not adults".  This apparent timing issue was ignored by people reposting the Fun Fest suggestion. Presumably the obviousness of the balloon explanation led to some people ignoring facts apparently inconsistent with the Fun Fest balloon explanation.  (The so-called "will to believe" applies to UFO skeptics as well as to UFO believers...).

However, after continued suggestions that the video showed balloons it seems that Nolan Jorgensen called Carmichael Park and he himself determined that there WAS a release of balloons at about 5pm.  He posted that the balloons were not released as part of the Fun Fest at Carmichael Park but that were in fact released by "a Memorial by a different group". He stated:

"I called park event people and asked and the time's for what I filmed don't match up. Unless your telling me I would see this two hour after the release. When there was a 8-10 wind that day".

Since in his comments he repeatedly stated that he filmed his video "at 7pm", this implies that he was told that the release during the Memorial was at about 5pm.  

It is not clear from Nolan Jorgensen's extremely brief dismissal of the balloon launch explanation whether the launch was at 5pm or during a Memorial that _began_ at 5pm, with the balloon launch _during_ the Memorial therefore being _later_ than 5pm. This would seem to be a more likely scenario than a mere coincidence that footage was filmed of things that looked like balloons (complete with strings) when there had been a balloon launch in the area relatively shortly before the footage was filmed.

In any event (and here's a point that no one seems to have raised with Nolan Jorgensen when he made his point about the timing of the balloon launch...) Nolan Jorgensen's assertion about the balloon launch being "two hours" before his video appears to be based on his belief in the comments he wrote on Youtube text that his video was filmed "at 7pm" but (drumroll please...) the video ITSELF contains an audio track in which he stated at about 45 seconds into the footage that he does not know the time but estimated it to be 5pm or 6pm.  

 

 

 

4. Relevant online discussions

Relevant discussions on the AboveTopSecret.com forum include the following:

2011 (August) discussion entitled "UFO Mass Sighting in Carmichael, CA"

 

This video was also discussed in August 2011 on The Truth Behind the Scenes website.