I am writing at the suggestion of my wife to find out if anyone else contacted you about strange lights visible on a warm Wisconsin night in early March. I am a retired teacher/school administrator so I guess I don���t have to worry about folks thinking I am hallucinating.
On the evening of March 7, 2016 I was driving my 1994 Chevy Van, hauling blood south from Stevens Point, Wisconsin to Madison, Wisconsin for the Red Cross. I left Stevens Point at about 7:30 pm CST traveling on Interstate 39/51 on a first warm evening of the spring, about 56 degrees at the time.
Traffic was light with gaps of one to two miles between cars. About fourteen miles south of Stevens Point, a set of three lights turned on in the sky above the highway that looked like three lights from a vanity mirror. I recall no color in the lights, but I was struck by the fact that there was no glare emanating from the lights. The lights seemed stationary and after about 5 to 8 seconds, the lights swirled on a horizontal plane, one following the other, like circling a drain, or like a computer icon spinning when a program is loading, then disappeared into itself.
(I live 15 miles from the Dane County Airport, east of Madison Wisconsin on a farm. I see planes coming from Milwaukee���s Mitchell field heading west over our farm at all times of day or night on a daily basis. The plane lights appear to have a glare to my eyes, and there is always a strobe flashing.)
The three lights were not flashing and they appeared to be about the same altitude as the jets that come over our farm 15 miles prior to their landing at Dane County Airport. The lights could have been a half mile to 5 miles away, not sure. My initial reaction to the lights is that of a jet on a path to the Central Wisconsin Airport about 20 miles north of Stevens Point, but with no strobe, and no appearance of moving toward or away from my location, I posited other explanations. I guessed that maybe I had some configuration of interior lighting inside the van that might be reflecting up in the windshield , so I moved my head close to the windshield and around the cab but there was no effect.
I picked up my cell and called my brother since he is a technology guy that maintains police and government communication equipment for a local county. I left a message with him to check on flights going to Central Wisconsin Airport, just in case my eyes were lying to me. As I was completing my message, about 4 miles down the highway, the three lights again appeared, but now they were to the east (on my left) and I was viewing them through the driver door window glass. They again appeared stationary and once again, the lights seemed to circle into themselves and disappear.
As I think about other explanations, I know that this area south of Stevens Point is a flat sandy soiled potato growing area. There are planes that crop dust and apply fertilizers, but being March 7 with the snow just having disappeared and the frost not quite yet gone, I doubted I was seeing lights from a crop duster in the dark.
Then I thought, hmmm, winter ending, first warm night, maybe someone is flying a drone that hovers and has cool lights. And��� it is a drone they can control over four miles.
Oh well. Just wondering if anyone else reported it.