Marie Panesko took this iPhone photo of two unidentified black objects over the skies of Chehalis Tuesday afternoon. “It looks like a science experiment gone awry,” said Panesko, and it turns out her evaluation was just about spot on.
The Lewis County 911 dispatch received several calls Tuesday about strange objects flying in the sky over Chehalis.
“One looked like those big black bags they store hay in,” said Marie Panesko of Chehalis.
Panesko said the other looked like a 8-foot-tall black tube floating vertically in the sky. Both objects were flying in the sky above Chehalis for at least half an hour before disappearing from view, Panesko said.
Officials at the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office did report the event to the Federal Aviation Administration in case it posed a flight risk. However, the FAA did not seem interested, the local authorities said.
“It looks like a science experiment gone awry,” Panesko said.
In fact, Clifton White’s physics class at W.F. High School was working outside around the same time Tuesday.
“We had a science project that just got away from them,” said Bob Walters, the principal at W.F. West. “It just went up in the air.”
The strange objects turned out to be nothing but trash bags joined together with masking tape.
“We were doing a buoyancy and thermodynamics thing,” White said.
The students had already calculated the temperature the air-filled bags would lift off at when the strings broke and they flew away.
White said next time they will use rope to tie their experimental instruments down.
“It’s actually entertaining,” he said. “It’s a real good laugh.”
•••
Amy Nile: (360) 807-8235
