The flying potato UFO sighting may be the most bizarre entry yet in the trove of government UFO files released by the Trump administration. According to newly disclosed documents, a giant, potato-shaped object was spotted hovering silently over the Colorado mountains by military personnel, only to vanish without explanation.

A Spud in the Sky

The strange encounter unfolded on a clear, mild February morning in 2022. At around 9:35 a.m., with temperatures near 50 degrees and a blue sky overhead, an Army intelligence officer and four members of his unit from Fort Carson reported seeing something extraordinary above the Cheyenne Mountains.

The object defied easy description. According to the documents, the witnesses said it was roughly the size of a large jet and resembled an angular, asymmetrical potato built from uneven panels. It hovered completely still, an estimated 300 to 500 feet above the mountains, yet it seemed to slowly shift shape over time.

Its surface added to the eeriness. The witnesses described a slightly translucent, shimmering white appearance with clearly defined edges and a milky glow that caught and reflected the sunlight. Then, as abruptly as it had appeared, the object was gone.

A Sketch of the Floating Potato

The story didn’t end on the mountainside. A couple of years later, one of the witnesses sat down for an interview at the FBI’s New York field office, recounting the sighting to a special agent and a forensic sketch artist. The result was a drawing of what genuinely looked like a potato suspended over the mountains.

The FBI’s account introduced fresh details that differed from the original report:

• The timing shifted, with the sighting now said to have occurred around 11:25 a.m.
• The surface was described as resembling articulating fish scales or panels that were non-symmetrical, non-overlapping, and irregularly shaped.
• Though the object stayed perfectly still, its panels appeared to ripple in slow waves, beginning at different points yet moving in unison.

Why These Files Are Public

The potato sighting is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration, which began releasing UFO files in batches the previous month. Trump framed the disclosures as a corrective to past secrecy, arguing that his predecessors had failed to be transparent on the subject and declaring that people could now decide for themselves what on earth is going on.

So far, though, the revelations have done little to settle the larger question of whether extraterrestrials are among us. None of the documents released to date have fundamentally reshaped that debate.

Even former President Barack Obama has weighed in on the broader topic in recent times. He told one interviewer that aliens were real but that he had never seen them and that they weren’t being hidden away at Area 51. He later walked back any hint of intrigue, insisting plainly that he saw no evidence during his presidency that extraterrestrials had ever made contact.

Potatoes in Space, Fact and Fiction

Oddly enough, the pairing of potatoes and space travel is not without precedent. The humble tuber played a starring role in keeping the fictional astronaut Mark Watney alive in “The Martian.” That story even inspired real life, when astronaut Don Pettit cultivated floating potatoes aboard the International Space Station, affectionately naming one of them Spudnik-1.

The 2022 incident also isn’t the first potato-themed UFO report on record. Back in 1950, a witness standing outside a gas station in the small town of Piggott, Arkansas, described seeing what resembled a 100-pound sack of potatoes drifting on the wind at roughly 8,000 feet. The investigator at the time offered a more grounded theory, suggesting it may simply have been some kind of balloon.

More Than Just Potatoes

The latest batch of records contains other puzzling accounts beyond the floating spud. One Defense Department report described how, over two days in October 2023, six federal law enforcement agents observed what they called orbs launching other orbs near a sensitive national security site in the western United States.

The Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office reviewed the incident but reached no firm conclusion. Its assessment noted that the described characteristics aligned with certain US military technologies, yet acknowledged that no single known system could fully account for everything the agents reported.

A Trick of the Light?

As for the giant potato, the government offered at least one down-to-earth possibility. At the time of the sighting, the mountains were blanketed with six to twelve inches of snow, and an official analysis suggested the position of the sun relative to Cheyenne Mountain could have allowed sunlight to scatter off the snow-covered ground.

That reflection, the analysis proposed, might have illuminated low-lying clouds in the area, creating an optical illusion. Notably, however, the assessment expressed only low confidence in that explanation, leaving the mystery of the hovering potato unresolved for now.