America's UFO hotspots revealed in new map that shows nearly 100,000 sightings spanning two decades ... is YOUR hometown in the 'red zone?'

The first step toward identifying what unidentified flying objects (UFOs) actually are might just be mapping where these enigmas are most sighted, a new study says.

Geographers with the University of Utah — working with the Pentagon's recently retired UFO chief Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick — analyzed roughly 98,000 total UFO reports spanning a 20-year period across the 21st Century, from 2001 to 2020.

The researchers aggressively cross-referenced the data by local population density, light pollution levels, annual cloud cover, 'tree canopy' cover, proximity to airports and military bases and a host of other factors that effect the number UFO sightings.

What they found was statistical proof of the long assumed 'historical relationship' between UFOs and the American West. 

Their study's county-by-county assessment turned up hot spots or 'red zones' most often just east of the Rockies or off toward the Pacific Ocean — but also a few odd outliers, including Georgetown county, South Carolina and Union, Kentucky.

Geographers with the University of Utah analyzed roughly 98,000 total UFO reports spanning a 20-year period across the 21st Century, from 2001 to 2020

The researchers aggressively cross-referenced the data by local population density, light pollution levels, annual cloud cover, 'tree canopy' cover, proximity to airports and military bases and a host of other factors that effect the number UFO sightings'

'The West has a historical relationship to UAP — Area 51 in Nevada, Roswell in New Mexico,' the study's lead author, Richard Medina, said in a statement.

'And here in Utah we have Skinwalker Ranch in the Uinta Basin and military activity in the US Army Dugway Proving Ground,' Medina, an associate professor of geography at the University of Utah, noted.

'Plus, there's a robust outdoor community that recreates in public lands year-round. People are out and looking skyward.'

While these explanations held true for the deep 'red' hotspots that covered almost all of Nevada and New Mexico, the study's authors were more perplexed about the equally deep red counties across Oregon and Washington state.

These rainy and 'relatively clouded' Pacific northwestern states, they noted, are more known for being blanketed in fog than for being prime sky-watching regions.  

'There are also some isolated counties throughout the rest of the country that warrant further investigation,' as they wrote in the journal Scientific Reports, 'to identify what properties may generate relatively more UAP [i.e. UFO] attention.'

Counties in Maine, Vermont, Indiana, Arkansas and Nebraska were some of the more inexplicable hot spots the team's analysis identified.  

The West has a historical relationship to UAP — Area 51 in Nevada , Roswell in New Mexico ,' the study's lead author, Richard Medina, said in a statement

To break their sighting study down by county, Median and his co-authors focused on two main criteria to compare with the UFO sighting reports.

READ MORE: 'UFO' reported over China with 'three light sources' that moved quickly without emitting any sound - and witnesses say it was not an aircraft 

Chinese social media platforms were flooded with images and videos of a UFO that appeared over Beijing and surrounding towns. People said it looked like a 'misty ball of light' hat moved from west to east without emitting any sound. One person shared on Weibo that the weather was clear in Beijing when they witnessed 'a glowing object looming' and determined it was not an aircraft because there were no flashing lights. 

First they compared the sighting statistics, obtained from the civilian National UFO Research Center, with a metric they called 'sky view potential,' an amalgam of data on how physically likely it would be to spot anything interesting in the nearby skies.

To assess each county's 'sky view potential,' they pooled together data on each area's light pollution, cloud cover and tree canopy cover — as well as the chances that odd or frequent objects would be in the sky from nearby airports and military bases.

'The idea is that if you have a chance to see something, then it's more likely that you're going to see unexplained phenomena in the sky,' Medina said.

'There's more technology in the sky than ever before so the question is: What are people actually seeing? It's a tough question to answer, and it is an important one because any uncertainty can be a potential threat to national security.'

The geographers attributed the West's higher percentage of sightings to the desert southwest's wide-open natural spaces and rural dark skies, unmolested by big city lights or industrial smog.

They found that the major UFO case hotspots showed a noticeable relationship to local air traffic and military installation activity, a clue that could indicated witnesses are often seeing genuine terrestrial objects that they simply did not recognize.

The team hopes that this geographic analysis will help government agencies better separate truly anomalous events in the skies from routine flights, and thus help uncover any legitimate security threat.