By the numbers: UFOs in 2010 up from year before

I've had some time to sort through the UFO reports that have come in recently, and I have been able to update the numbers of cases reported in both 2009 and so far in 2010.

There were about 850 UFO sightings reported in Canada in 2009. The stack of files is about eight inches high on my desk. These have yet to be added into the main UFOROM database, so the breakdown of sightings by province, times, shapes, number of witnesses, etc., will have to wait until the spreadsheet elves come and physically type in the data. Until then, I at least have the raw numbers in terms of monthly reports and the total for the year.

Those of you who have been following the blog know that 2008 was the record year for UFO reports in Canada, with more than 1000 reports on record. With 2009 only at about 850, UFO cases took a bit of a dip. I'm fairly certain that this was an anomaly, as the trend had been for a slow but steady increase over the years.

This is more clear if we look at the graph that shows the number of UFO reports in Canada during the past 20 years:

Okay, so even if there were "only" 850 UFO reports in Canada in 2009, the general trend of increasing numbers of UFO reports is still evident, with a few spikes here and there that ufologists will have to reckon with at one point. This puts 2009 third-highest in terms of Canadian UFO reports, even with the dip.

So what about 2010? Well, we're still getting reports coming in for December, but even so, there are nearly 900 sightings already on file. This means that 2010 already has the second-highest number of UFO reports on record for Canada, and the year's not done yet. (It also puts 2009 back to fourth place.)