Florida has been a hotspot for UFO sightings in the U.S., being among the states with the greatest number of them, according to Axios.
In a report earlier this year, Axios determined that there were nearly 7,500 total reported sightings in the Sunshine State.
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Broward County had the most reports with 635 sightings, though Franklin County had the greatest density of reports, with 203.6 sightings per 100,000 residents.
On the flip side, Lafayette County had no reported sightings, putting it at the bottom of the list.
This year alone, the National UFO Reporting Center has documented 63 cases in Florida as of Thursday.
These reports involve residents in the state describing what they saw, often times with either video or images submitted for consideration. Many of these reports were later determined to involve rockets, balloons or other aircraft, though others are still up in the air.
The 2024 reports were as follows:
| Date | City | Shape | Summary | Reason? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan. 1 | Bradenton | Orb | “Light came down, move sideways, then back upwards until it disappeared.” | |
| Jan. 3 | Loxahatchee | Light | “Behavior not normal” | |
| Jan. 3 | Port St. Lucie | Fireball | “A large cloud appeared and had a Bright light. Called for wife to come out to look, and a bright light appeared out of the cloud.” | |
| Jan. 3 | N/A | Light | “On the January 4, 2024 episode of the Dan Bongino Show on Rumble, Dan Bongino shared a very recent UFO sighting.” | |
| Jan. 4 | Gainesville | Rectangle | “Craft approximately size of medium ship” | |
| Jan. 10 | Marion Oaks | Other | “Cloud formation of 5 discs. Took photographs.” | Cloud |
| Jan. 11 | Lakeland | Cross | “It was too glowing to be an aircraft.” | |
| Jan. 19 | Crestview | Light | “Blinking lights in pattern. Not normal for area at all.” | |
| Jan. 20 | Tampa | Changing | “When I pulled my phone out to record, it turned its lights off and sped off over my house, but I was still able to record it clearly.” | |
| Jan. 23 | Jacksonville | Circle | “Saw a bright orange object moving in the sky. It disappeared eventually behind a cloud. After recording, another one came by again.” | |
| Jan. 27 | Osprey | Disk | “Disc-shaped objects still in the sky for about 2.5 hours with about nine circular lights along the length, larger in the middle.” | |
| Jan. 28 | Jupiter Island | Changing | “Ball of red light — hovered 30 seconds, then began flying toward horizon. As it got smaller, a white half-circle of light trailed a bit.” | |
| Jan. 28 | Palm Beach | Changing | “Saw an object moving slowly with what appeared to be a tail or trail behind it.” | Rocket? |
| Feb. 2 | Pompano Beach | Cone | “Initially, we observed one, but as we continued to look, we spotted many more.” | Balloon? |
| Feb. 9 | Tampa | Orb | “As captured by front-door camera” | Insect |
| Feb. 13 | Orlando | Unknown | “Random flying lights” | |
| Feb. 14 | Oxford | Other | “It looked like a cloud in front of a bright star to begin with...” | Rocket |
| Feb. 19 | Cottondale | Sphere | “They were flying low toward me from the southeast, almost side-by-side, zigzagging really fast. Flew over me and cut back sharp south.” | |
| Feb. 19 | Hilliard | Light | “While operating an aircraft in cruise at FL400, the crew observed three lights appearing and disappearing for approximately one hour, 25 minutes.” | |
| Feb. 20 | Trenton | Triangle | “Black triangle craft, one yellowish-white light at each tip” | |
| Feb. 20 | Tampa | Unknown | “Multiple objects. Visible with sunglasses. Not visible with naked eye — only shimmers of light.” | Birds? |
| Feb. 21 | Deerfield Beach | Circle | “Object circular flashing orange” | |
| Feb. 24 | DeFuniak Springs | Triangle | “First saw orangish-white lights rotating or flashing from a distance in the north sky” | |
| Feb. 28 | Holiday | Orb | “Me and my family were out on a walk. At the end of the meaningful walk, me and my dad looked up, and it zoomed, stopped, waved and left.” | |
| March 3 | Lauderhill | Circle | “White circle met up with two more white circles, formed a triangle, flew upward into the sky.” | |
| March 3 | Altamonte Springs | Sphere | “Had foggy gas following it and was moving super slow, like hovering over in front of my house.” | Rocket? |
| March 4 | Vero Beach | Fireball | “Bright orange trail, which then seemed to disappear and reappear as a milky or cloudy orb in the sky, still traveling south. Lost sight.” | Rocket |
| March 5 | Tampa | Orb | “Saw orb-shaped object over water” | |
| March 6 | Pensacola | Unknown | “Three white lights that moved together” | |
| March 9 | Jupiter | Sphere | “I was driving northbound on I-95 coming home from a camping trip with my son, and I saw a floating orb. No mistaking it as a balloon or plane.” | |
| March 15 | Largo | Triangle | “We saw the object approaching our location from the northeast at a high speed.” | |
| March 15 | Daytona Beach | Formation | “Eight lights abreast flying northward” | |
| March 28 | Delray Beach | Unknown | “Walking dogs with my wife, and this weird formation floated across the sky and looked like it was morphing.” | Balloon |
| March 30 | Middleburg | Orb | “Traveled the whole view of the sky in a second or two.” | |
| April 4 | Punta Gorda | Teardrop | “At tree-top level, no sound, moving maybe 40 mph, pink-white-blue foggy look” | |
| April 5 | Cocoa Beach | Cylinder | “Extraordinarily fast, unbelievably quiet, whitish, kind of translucent” | |
| April 7 | Spring Hill | Oval | “Looking up at the early evening sky and noticed the object hovering directly above at approximately 10,000 feet.” | |
| April 7 | Cape Coral | Light | “A blinking green light moving rapidly horizontally from west to east and then east to west.” | |
| April 8 | Pembroke Pines | Cylinder | “Didn’t actually see it real time. Appeared in picture I took of the solar eclipse behind heavy clouds.” | Camera Anomaly |
| April 12 | Navarre | Triangle | “Craft was seen overhead with a triangle shape. Seems to be camouflaged.” | |
| April 12 | Royal Palm Beach | Star | “Object moved at a high rate of speed from southeast to northwest approximately 30,000 feet in the air 4-5 miles away.” | |
| April 12 | Navarre | Triangle | “Triangle object, 16 visible lights, craft left line of sight without flying over horizon, instead apparently leaving orbit.” | |
| April 14 | Lakewood Ranch | Light | “Fast-moving streak of light, sometimes splitting into two or three pieces” | Insect |
| April 15 | Zephyrhills | Other | “Silent, slow with fast acceleration. Low but climbed high quickly, hard to video, black, ‘glitchy’” | |
| April 25 | Marineland | Circle | “Stationary object(s) high in the southern early-evening sky” | |
| April 28 | Tice | Orb | “Photo of round metallic object” | Balloon? |
| May 1 | Lakeland | Orb | “Light recorded on SD ring doorbell” | Aircraft? |
| May 4 | Sarasota | Other | “Gray bell-shaped object spotted flying” | Balloon? |
| May 5 | Jacksonville | Formation | “Several lights on an arched trajectory, staying in place before quickly accelerating away.” | |
| May 6 | Bradenton | Formation | “100 blue orb formations, white star-like orbs speeding across the sky and speeding toward each other!” | |
| May 10 | Clewiston | Light | “We saw two extremely bright lights 50 feet off the ground going past us, heading south.” | |
| May 11 | St. Petersburg | Flash | “Pair of blinking green plane-like lights that hovered a while, then started to dart/jag at odd, fast speeds.” | |
| May 12 | Kissimmee | Fireball | “We witnessed a rocket-like anomaly shooting upward in the sky.” | |
| May 13 | Sarasota | Oval | “It was flying like a plane but was flat as a pancake.” | |
| May 16 | Orlando | Other | “When I first saw, it was heading down, then a few minutes later, started to go up.” | Contrail |
| May 17 | Lake Placid | Fireball | “Orange contrail, disappeared; reappeared white; huge translucent teardrop, then two-to-three small lights detached, traveling within the fireball.” | Rocket |
| May 21 | Bartow | Cone | “No noise, flew in side-by-side formation then stacked formation until disappearance.” | Birds? |
| May 21 | Orlando | Chevron | “My significant other and I looked into cloudless night sky together and saw a silent, slow, wide and low ‘V’ outlined in moonlight moving in a line.” | |
| May 22 | Kissimmee | Star | “What I thought was a star appeared and then started moving across the sky slowly and then dissipated.” | |
| May 22 | Alafaya | Cigar | “Bright yellow light, low in the sky, could see it was long. As I got closer, it wasn’t moving.” | |
| May 28 | Ormond Beach | Oval | “Oval-shaped, no wings, shiny chrome, flying higher than the airplanes.” | |
| June 8 | Brooksville | Light | “Moving light shining down on me” | |
| June 9 | Satellite Beach | Oval | “I saw an oblong-shaped white object above to my left that was low altitude moving from east to west, with slightly more westerly direction.” |
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