Three lights maintaining triangular formation – Wolverhampton, UK – 23 Aug 2026, 22:01 BST

[jon_eir]

Some suggestions:

- https://earth.nullschool.net/ lets you view a model based on historical wind data, at any time and place, and a choice of altitudes. Because the air movements are displayed as animated streams, you can sort of eyeball where something might have come from.

- I recall that the high altitude balloon hobbyists use some involved wind tracking tools for balloons they've lost contact with. Someone might have to trawl the "spy balloon" threads to find it, or maybe use a more direct web search.

The biggest problem here is that this sighting does not give a lot of clues to the altitude of the objects, and that introduces a source of error into the calculations.

i will for sure check this out-its my first real time looking a wind data etc. the data I had access to gave a pretty consist figure from 10-80m and 80-200m that's the ranges I modeled. with "take off" and "landing" and movement tru these ranges incorporated also. there may still a problem with the data i had

 

[JMartJr]

I'd advise caution when using wind data and how wind might have impacted an object within a few hundred feet of the ground (or of the tallest up-wind obstruction) unless you are dealing with wind coming over a wide expanse of water or an open prairie or something very smooth like that. (In the latter cases, I'd only be somewhat cautious.)

I have no source for this other than a few decades experience trying to deal with winds at lower altitudes, and comparing them to what is/was actually experienced on-site. What I will call "micro-local" conditions can have a lot of impact on how fast the wind moves, how smooth or turbulent it is, and what it's direction is at a specific point in time. Wind can vary a great deal from one end of the kite field to the other at a given moment, including in speed and direction. (Somewhere I have a photo from back in my pre-digital days of an even at an American football field, with flags at different ends of the field blowing directly towards one another -- I doubt I can dig it out at this point but if I can lay hands on it I'll post it.

Looks like much of the terrain around Wolverhamppton is reasonably even, but there are some hills -- and from the OP video it looks like there are some lights on a hill off in the same direction as the triangle of lights. So while the prevailing wind at that time is worth noting, just keep in the back of your minds that it is possible that wind AT THAT SPECIFIC POINT AND TIME may have been funneling around terrain or other obstructions, and may not be quite what the overall flow of wind across the area was.