Sweetwater County - Jim Bridger Power Plant - Drone Reports

[Mick West]

https://cowboystatedaily.com/2025/1...os-over-sweetwater-county-are-the-new-normal/

Sweetwater County Sheriff John Grossnickle saw the drone-like flying objects with his own eyes as recently as Saturday night, his spokesman Jason Mower told Cowboy State Daily on Monday.

That marks 13 months of lighted, drone-like objects congregating, often in coordinated formations, over the Red Desert and power plant, Mower said, adding that they're too high to shoot down from the ground level.

"We've worked with everybody," he said. "We've done everything we can to figure out what they are, and nobody wants to give us any answers."

Mower said the sheriff took Wyoming U.S. House Rep. Harriet Hageman out to see the objects, and she watched them.

Hageman's office did not respond to an email request for confirmation and comment by publication.

The phenomena are so pervasive, and any hope of addressing them so remote, that people have stopped reporting them to the sheriff's office, said Mower.

He uses the terms "drone" and "unidentified flying object" interchangeably, noting that the objects are thousands of feet above the earth; they move like drones, but are fundamentally still a mystery.

13 months and no good videos seems rather odd.

This seems very much like the normal misidentifications, compounded by people's reluctance to accept they were mistaken.

While there's not much to skydentify, I think it's one to keep an eye on, for when they actually publish some evidence.

 

[jarlrmai]

The day after the ADSB data is no longer available

 

[jdog]

https://cowboystatedaily.com/2025/1...os-over-sweetwater-county-are-the-new-normal/

Sweetwater County Sheriff John Grossnickle saw the drone-like flying objects with his own eyes as recently as Saturday night, his spokesman Jason Mower told Cowboy State Daily on Monday.

That marks 13 months of lighted, drone-like objects congregating, often in coordinated formations, over the Red Desert and power plant, Mower said, adding that they're too high to shoot down from the ground level.

"We've worked with everybody," he said. "We've done everything we can to figure out what they are, and nobody wants to give us any answers."

Mower said the sheriff took Wyoming U.S. House Rep. Harriet Hageman out to see the objects, and she watched them.

Hageman's office did not respond to an email request for confirmation and comment by publication.

The phenomena are so pervasive, and any hope of addressing them so remote, that people have stopped reporting them to the sheriff's office, said Mower.

He uses the terms "drone" and "unidentified flying object" interchangeably, noting that the objects are thousands of feet above the earth; they move like drones, but are fundamentally still a mystery.

13 months and no good videos seems rather odd.

This seems very much like the normal misidentifications, compounded by people's reluctance to accept they were mistaken.

While there's not much to skydentify, I think it's one to keep an eye on, for when they actually publish some evidence.

"...over Sweetwater County's Red Desert and Jim Bridger Power Plant" leaves a lot of wiggle room, since Wikipedia says the Red Desert covers 9,320 square miles, a space larger than the state of Vermont.

It looks like there is plenty of jetliner traffic along commercial routes over and near the power plant between multiple hubs like Denver, Salt Lake, Seattle, Chicago and Minneapolis, including these flights from just one snapshot yesterday.

The sheriff is a lifelong Wyoming resident who has worked in the department since 1997 and is in his second four-year term, according to his LinkedIn page. (So one might expect some familiarity with the region's night sky.) His jurisdiction sounds... sparse and not the ideal location for random drones to be visiting: "Sweetwater County Sheriff's Office is a medium-sized law enforcement organization of approximately 75 sworn and 100 total personnel tasked with serving about 45,000 citizens throughout the jurisdictional boundaries of all 10,500 square miles of Sweetwater County, Wyoming."

 

[John J.]

The power plant mentioned in the OP quote is the Jim Bridger Steam Plant (stated in the Cowboy State Daily link).
UFO enthusiasts might be disappointed that it's a coal and gas-burning plant, not nuclear
(Jim Bridger Steam Plant, Global Energy Monitor wiki https://www.gem.wiki/Jim_Bridger_Steam_Plant).

It's a substantial piece of infrastructure, so those of us with a more conspiratorial bent might think it could be of interest to (hypothetical) would-be saboteurs or foreign adversaries, but realistically it's hard to imagine what useful information might be gathered by a drone that couldn't be better gathered by other means, or what nefarious purpose that information might be used for.

That marks 13 months of lighted, drone-like objects congregating, often in coordinated formations, over the Red Desert and power plant... ...The phenomena are so pervasive, and any hope of addressing them so remote, that people have stopped reporting them to the sheriff's office, said Mower.

13 months and no good videos seems rather odd.

Totally agree.
And how does Sherriff Grosnickle (or Mower, his spokesman) know people aren't reporting seeing drones because they are "...so pervasive"?
They might have stopped reporting them because they haven't seen any.
The only thing we can derive from that line is that no-one (presumably excepting Grosnickle) is reporting seeing any drones.

The drones are "lighted" and "pervasive". But no photos or footage so far, after 13 months of claimed activity.


[Admin: Speculation removed]