Crop circles appear in Washington

Spokane's KHQ-TV reports the appearance of crop circles in a Washington wheat field. Reporter Mike Perry:

The circles resemble a four-leaf clover and remind [landowner] Cindy Geib of Mickey Mouse ears. The design knocked down about an acre of their wheat. Some of it could be salvaged by combines when the harvest starts in a week or two, she said, but some will be lost.
"Of course, we don't have alien insurance," she said.

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Drabula

looks old school.
jandrese

Update from the future: It’s pranksters.
- Brainspore
  
  Or maybe aliens POSING as pranksters.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Couldn’t the aliens just BE pranksters?
    - Brainspore
      
      I vote for “alien pranksters pretending to be human pranksters pretending to be aliens.” It’s all part of an intergalactic meta-prank that’s far beyond our primitive species’ ability to comprehend.
Tom O’Neill

“Alien Insurance?” Next comes Zombie Insurance…
Tom
- http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
  
  We (my company) were offered Terrorism Insurance when we took out our policy. I’m still not entirely sure what it covers.
  Given the fact that we’re probably as likely to be visited by aliens as targeted by a terrorist, we chose to risk it.
http://twitter.com/jclor jclor

Jacques Vallee was unavailable for comment?
- stillcantfightthedite
  
  Clearly this is the work of military satellites, or extra-dimensional aliens!
http://twitter.com/digitalArtform Joseph Francis

I wonder if it’s the ones from the wine bottle
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_62yreAn0EkU/S9dr7advoHI/AAAAAAAAAp0/Qy_Pg54wong/s1600/cigare.jpg
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_PCRLF2CFMUTNTVEGVB2KJBHHSM Phil Collins

In today’s top story, the last crop of wheat to not perish in withering drought gets stamped down by nerds; national digust for nerds continues…
http://noctilucent-studios.blogspot.com/ Noctilucent Studios

The Milk Hill circle was created in a 30 minute time span, in the dark, in a light rain. Doubtful this 409 circle creation was done by some dudes with boards and strings.

http://andrewburgess.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/20010812milkhill1desktop15fd-1.jpg
- keithfulkerson
  
  Of course it was done by people. Every year they step up their game, trying to outdo each other. Where did you get the 30 minute time from?
  - Brainspore
    
    I don’t know who did one of the recent graffiti murals in my neighborhood, but it’s pretty intricate. Verdict: ALIENS.
    - Finnagain
      
      Or STREET LIGHTS!
    - stillcantfightthedite
      
      I like making this analogy using baked goods.
      
      “No human hand could make such an intricately decorated cake! Clearly the work of beings from beyond the moon!”
- wysinwyg
  
  I’m also curious where the 30 minute figure comes from if you don’t mind citing sources.
http://profiles.google.com/keithdtyler Keith Tyler

Given the recent jump in wheat prices, I doubt the Geibs will even record a loss.

BTW, the Northwest has been notably unaffected by the weather trends of the rest of the continent. (Sometimes this is a good thing, but not always — early summer was COLD.) Our wheat fields are fine, and expected to reap huge benefits.
- ldobe
  
  Yep. It’s quite nice up here in the corner. The summer high (in my neck of the woods: South Snohomish County) so far is ~84F, and it was only that hot for a couple of days. I love Washington.
  - Finnagain
    
    Ha ha. You make joke.
    
    Ministry of Corrected Information would like most helpfully to point out that Pacific Northwest is not, repeat NOT better climate. Much rain each day. Please stay where you are.
Boundegar

I’m surprised this is still happening. It’s like Kilroy Was Here.
http://www.facebook.com/CropCircleQueen Suzanne Taylor

It’s not a done deal that all crop circles are a joke. Watch the trailer for a good documentary that will give you some alternative info: http://CropCircleMovie.com
- Brainspore
  
  With respect to both you and your film, Ms. Taylor: it’s not a “done deal” that any form of public art was created entirely by human beings. (For all I know Banksy is a Neptunian!) It’s just the most reasonable explanation given the evidence.
- nixiebunny
  
  It’s not a done deal to some people. Others have understood that it’s entirely a human phenomenon.
  
  When you actually try to find a way for this work to be done by a non-human entity, it becomes quite a puzzle. But ascribe it to people, and it’s quite easy to understand.
  
  If you know some thing that I don’t, let me know. I haven’t studied the subject for 20 years, but the only thing I see that’s changed since then is the scale.
http://noctilucent-studios.blogspot.com/ Noctilucent Studios

Still looking for the 30 minute figure. In the meantime, here are some very telling eyewitness accounts…which I know do not count for squat, but are interesting nevertheless for the similarities…”"Over the years, some 70 people have said they have witnessed the formation of a crop circle. In almost every case only simple crop circles are seen forming; virtually no one has witnessed the appearance of a highly sophisticated pictogram. Most eyewitnesses speak of a very powerful but localized force like a wind hitting the field and spinning the crop down extremely rapidly, within about 10 to 20 seconds, usually in the early morning or early evening.

In 1931 a boy and a farmer in Essex, UK, witnessed a crop circle form in a matter of seconds. The farmer attributed it to the ‘Devil’s twist’, a kind of whirlwind blamed for similar manifestations in the area since at least 1830 (Silva, 2002, p. 4). In July 1934, a woman was gazing over a field of corn when she heard a fire-like crackling sound and saw a whirlwind in the centre of the field, spinning stalks, seeds and dust up into the air for about 100 feet (Corliss, 1994, p. 270). She found a perfect circle of flattened corn, hot to the touch, the plant stalks being interlaced or even plaited. The same whirlwind created a second circle about four metres in diameter in the corner of the same field. The plaiting or braiding of flattened vegetation is also observed in modern crop formations.

One evening in July 1981, Ray Barnes witnessed a ‘wave’ or ‘line’ moving through the heads of a cereal crop in Wiltshire. After travelling across the field in an arc, the line dropped to the ground and radially described a 75-foot circle in a clockwise direction in a single sweep in about four seconds, accompanied by a hissing noise. The crop went down as neatly as if it had been cut by a giant flan cutter, and the plants showed absolutely no spring-back (Corliss, p. 268; Pringle, 1999, p. 6). In the summer of 1983 a Wiltshire man, Melvyn Bell, was riding a horse on the northern edge of Salisbury Plain when he noticed frenzied activity in a wheat field 60 yards in front of him. He then saw a 30-foot circle being flattened before his very eyes. He did not hear any noise but saw dust, dirt and light debris spiralling into the air. He later described the cause of the circle as a ‘stationary whirlwind’ (Collins, 2009, p. 116). In June 1989 a witness saw a big orange ball of light, about 30-40 feet in diameter, descend into a wheat field in England. The bottom flattened as it touched the crop and the ground, and disappeared a few seconds later after a single bounce. The next morning a ringed circle was found at the same spot (Haselhoff, 2000, p. 20).

Gary and Vivienne Tomlinson witnessed a circle forming at Hambledon, Surrey, in May 1990 (Pringle, 1999, pp. 3-5). One evening, they were walking by a wheat field when a whirlwind appeared, looking like a shimmering mist, and making a tremendous noise. A strong gust of wind pushed them from the side and above. They both felt tingly all over and their hair was standing on end. All at once the wind scooped them off the path into the field. A two-metre-diameter circle formed around them within a couple of seconds, growing outwards from the centre in an anti-clockwise spiral. The whirlwind then split into two: the first zigzagged into the distance over the top of the wheat while the second formed a second circle nearby. It looked like a transparent glowing tube stretching endlessly into the sky. Miniature whirlwinds – small, glistening vortices about four inches apart – had meanwhile appeared in the circle they were standing in. They whirled around the crop in small bunches towards the perimeter, gently laying the wheat down and enlarging the circle. The whole episode lasted about seven minutes. The couple felt lethargic and nauseous for a week afterwards, and Vivienne suffered perforated ear drums.

In 1991 Martin Sohn-Rethel and his family, walking on downland near Ilford in East Sussex, were almost knocked off their feet by an invisible force, which then moved into the adjacent field, and swept down a perfect circle in no more than 5 to 10 seconds (Thomas, 2002, p. 29).
- Finnagain
  
  Well, those are fun! I’ll file them with the aliens and pancake story:
  
  Joe Simonton’s buckwheat pancakes
  
  http://2012diaries.blogspot.com/2012/06/strange-tale-of-joe-simonton-and.html
- http://disqus.com/Kimmoth/ Kimmo
  
  Weird stuff… I’m of the mind there’s likely to be something going on here.
  
  It seems stranger that all these folks would cook up bogus stories and others would go to an incredible amount of trouble to create a pointless hoax (obviously many of the simpler ones are hoaxes, as has been shown), rather than that there exists some rare phenomenon we don’t yet understand.
  
  See ball lightning, for instance.
http://noctilucent-studios.blogspot.com/ Noctilucent Studios

You know, something else that the post fails to mention is that this field in Washington does not have the familiar tramlines like most of the UK ones do, making the lack of a trial out to the circles all the more telling.