BONNER SPRINGS, Kan. – The skies above a small Kansas town became the stage for an astonishing and unusual spectacle as a large black ring seemed to defy explanation.
The bizarre phenomenon was spotted by Bonner Springs resident Frankie Camren on Monday afternoon while on a motorcycle ride, which was abruptly halted by the unusual anomaly hanging in the air on a nearby county road.
“I just pulled over,” Camren recounted in an interview with FOX Weather. “I’m almost 50 years old. I ain’t ever seen nothing like that.”
Camren captured the strange occurrence on video, noting that the center of the ring was intensely dark, and smoke appeared to be swirling around it.
“Can somebody tell me what the (expletive) is this?” he can be heard saying in the clip. “And I’m not using no app … it appears that little black stuff has fallen down the center of it.”
Initially perplexed, he considered possible explanations but dismissed the idea of mortars as he heard no loud noises while riding his Harley-Davidson just blocks away.
Amidst the onlookers’ amazement, one woman in Camren’s video shared that her initial thought, seeing it from afar, was whether it was a flock of birds.
The video was later reviewed by the FOX Forecast Center, where meteorologists offered a likely explanation. According to their analysis, the rare smoke ring was most likely the result of some type of explosion. They likened it to the formation of a mushroom cloud, where rapidly rising air traps smoke in a ring-like formation because it is moving faster than the surrounding air.
Interestingly, Camren told FOX Weather that some individuals in nearby Tonganoxie had reported seeing similar, albeit smaller, rings the day before.
After posting the video on his Facebook page, it quickly went viral.
“My phone just kind of blew up,” Camren said, describing the surge in attention from the unusual post as local news stations further amplified its spread.
On March 29, a similar phenomenon occurred in Seattle, where residents reported seeing a nearly identical black ring in the sky. FOX 13 Seattle reported that they contacted the National Weather Service, which confirmed it was not related to any weather phenomena.
One FOX Weather meteorologist captured the scene while at a Seattle Mariners game and watched the ring generate from a motocross event across the street at Lumen Field.
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