The UFO hotspot chart that was really just a population map

Raw UFO-sighting totals rank California first by a mile — so the saucers must love California. They mostly just love where the people are: the top of the chart is a list of the most populous states.

National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC), via Mappr, 2026Added July 6, 2026

Horizontal bar chart titled “Where the aliens are landing” showing raw UFO sighting counts by state, with California towering at 17,158, then Florida 8,880, Washington 7,633, Texas 6,719, New York 6,346, Pennsylvania 5,395, Arizona 5,347, Ohio 4,728 — Exhibit A — as published

The same sightings drawn per 100,000 residents, where the leaderboard flips: Vermont 92, Washington 90, Montana 87, Alaska 86, Maine 84, New Hampshire 83, Oregon 82, New Mexico 77 — and California, first in raw counts, falls to about 44 — Exhibit B — the honest redraw

The claim

California is America’s UFO capital — it logs more sightings than any other state, so something out there really is drawn to the Golden State.

The trick

The bars plot raw report totals, and raw counts of almost anything mostly measure population. The eight tallest bars are, near enough, the eight biggest states: California leads with ~17,000 because it has ~39 million residents to look up, not because it has the most aliens. Rank states by raw sightings and you get the same leaderboard you’d get for pizza orders, parking tickets, or sneezes — a map of where the people are, wearing a UFO costume.

The honest version

Divide by the thing the question is actually about — people — and the chart flips. At sightings per 100,000 residents the leaders are small, rural, dark-sky states: Vermont, Montana, Alaska, Maine, New Hampshire. California slides from 1st to mid-pack (~44 per 100k). The honest outlier is Washington, high on both charts — a genuinely sighting-happy place rather than merely a crowded one. (Even per-capita, these are reports filed, so reporting culture and internet access still tug at the numbers — but at least the denominator is no longer doing the lying.)