In the past season, the number of reported crop circles was at an all-time low. By the way, the decline in reports about Crop Circles in 2016 was recorded not only in the CIS countries, but throughout the world.
The first Circles of 2016 were discovered on January 2 on the coast of the Gulf of Finland (Solnechny settlement, resort area of St. Petersburg). A member of the NWFO-Kosmopoisk group, walking in the evening along the coast of a deserted beach, found two circles on ice, at a distance of about 3-3.5 meters from the edge of the coast. The surface of the bay along the entire observable coast was entirely covered with ice, 2-3 mm thick, no “windows” of clean water were observed. One of the circles was static, the other was rotating very slowly clockwise. The depth at the place where the Circle appears is about 1 m, there are no pipes or drains in this place. Since there was no way to get to the Circles on thin ice, the next day several members of the RIG NWFO-Kosmopoisk with a rubber boat left for the site. However, over the past night, the thin ice of the Gulf of Finland was all broken by the ebb and flow,and also heavily covered with falling snow. Due to the active movement of the cracked ice, large openings, long multi-meter cracks and a fairly large space of ice-free water were formed. No trace of the Circle could be found.
Circles on the coast of the Gulf of Finland
Since it was not possible to investigate the Kroogi, information about them was deliberately not published, so as not to provoke a wave of fakes, as happened at the end of 2014, when the media promoted the message about the Circles in the Snow in Penza. And the jokers trampled forgeries in different regions of our country until the snow melted.
On April 22, a message came from the Novokubansky district of the Krasnodar Territory. The media reported that on the Kuban River, local residents discovered a Circle on Ice - a round rotating ice floe with a diameter of about 8 meters. After a check carried out by members of Kosmopoisk, it turned out that the media were trying to pass off the event of 2014 as a "sensation-2016". We found that no circles appeared on the ice of the Kuban River in 2016, and the Kuban River did not freeze this winter.
From the end of April, there were reports of windblows, which inexperienced researchers mistook for authentic crop circles. The first such message came from the Rostov region, later from the entire southern region (Krasnodar Territory, Stavropol Territory, Adygea), from Bashkortostan, from the Sumy region of Ukraine, etc. All messages were checked by members of Cosmopoisk.
On June 9, a message was received about the appearance of Circles in the field near Krasnodar near the village of Znamensky. On the same day, the Krasnodar-Kosmopoisk group left for a check. After a visual inspection (broken stems, careless borders of the Circle, the presence of insects, etc.), measurements and sampling, the Circle was found to be fake.
Promotional video:
Circles near the village. Znamensky
A few days later, Vadim Chernobrov and members of Cosmopoisk from other cities came to the Circle. Repeated measurements were taken. The original verdict has been confirmed. It was possible to establish the sequence in which the forgery was carried out, the width of the used "treadmill", the agricultural track that the forgers used to invisibly penetrate the field, and in the nearest forest belt, traces of their parking were found.
In June, the Geoglyphic Expedition of Cosmopoisk took place in the Krasnodar Territory. The expedition was led by Vadim Chernobrov. During the expedition, nightly observations of the sky and fields were carried out in order to record the process of the possible appearance of the Pictograms in the fields, interviews with local residents, and reconnaissance trips to find geoglyphs (including aerial reconnaissance). During one such watch, the Space Search teams managed to observe a UFO.
At the end of the Geoglyphic Expedition of the Cosmopoisk, when the main participants had already left, those who remained were lucky enough to observe UFOs. On June 25 at 1:15 am, while observing the fields, from observation post # 1 (in the camp), two blue lights were seen in the north (angular dimensions less than 1 °). A UFO sighting signal was transmitted to post # 2 (located about 1.5 km from the camp). However, no lights were visible from observation post # 2, as were hidden by a forest belt. The lights hung in place statically for about 20 minutes, which is not typical for the glow when authentic Circles appeared. The animals in the area did not react in any way. The observers decided that the lights were probably a technique working in the field (although they noted that the lights of the technique are usually warm yellow, but, by the way, the glow,the accompanying appearance of authentic crop circles is usually also yellow or white). And they changed the observation point from north to east. At the same time, the blue lights were hidden by the forest belt. And after another 5 minutes, the forest belt lit up with a bright glow of warm orange light and everything disappeared. A repeated signal was transmitted to the group at the second observation post. One person from the second observation group saw a dim ball rising above the forest belt, shimmering with all the colors of the rainbow. According to an eyewitness, the color play was very unusual, the quote: "there were more colors than in the rainbow." The angular dimensions of the ball are about 5 °. Since the ball was very faint, it quickly got lost in the actual sky, and it was not possible to trace its trajectory. Since the lights were observed from only one observation post, it was not possible to establish their exact hovering point. Presumably, the lights were hanging over the ravine, or over the field behind the ravine. Immediately after observation, in the recorded azimuth, the terrain was swept as far as possible in night conditions. In the morning, fields in the area of tens of kilometers were surveyed along this azimuth (some of the fields had already been removed). No anomalies were found on the ground.
As a result of the Geoglyphic Expedition in the Krasnodar Territory and the work of the regional Cosmopoisk groups in other regions: no authentic pictograms were recorded on the fields this season. It is worth noting that this year in the south turned out to be quite rainy, there were a lot of fields with lodged cereals, perhaps the Circles appeared, but were not noticed against the background of numerous windblows.
At the end of October, a message was received from the so-called anomalous zone Okunevo (Omsk region) about the appearance of Circles in the snow. However, the Kroogi data turned out to be a rather crude forgery.
At the end of November, an attempt was made to catch the moment when the Circles on the ice of the Medveditsa River appeared in the Volgograd Region. The Medveditsa River has a rather large length, and in different years the appearance of the Circles is recorded in different parts of it. In the area of the city of Zhirnovsk, Circles on ice were recorded in 2014 and 2015, however, by the time the members of the Cosmopoisk arrived at the specified point, Circles had time to either melt or freeze into the ice. This year, thanks to the fact that Vadim Chernobrov left for Zhirnovsk in advance, we managed to be at the place of the appearance of the Circle on the very next day after the message was received, but this year it was not possible to find the Circle. Due to the abundant snowfall, information about the appearance of the Circle on Ice could not be confirmed or refuted. Accordingly, one cannot talk about its anomaly.
At the end of the year: 12 reports were received, of which the overwhelming majority were reports of windblows (lodging of cereals due to heavy rain and wind). There were two fakes - Circle in the field near Krasnodar and Circles in the snow in Okunevo. Nothing definite can be said about the Circles on the ice of the Gulf of Finland and the Circle on the ice of the Medveditsa River, since both cases could not be investigated.
In the next field season, research will be continued.
Maria Semenova
