There are fewer UFO sightings in NYC in 2021

Even E.T. isn’t visiting the Big Apple anymore.

UFO sightings nosedived 41% in 2021, down to 27 from 46 the year before, according to the National UFO Reporting Center.

Whether COVID put aliens on lockdown or Gotham gawkers just weren’t stargazing this year, the reason for the decline is unclear.

Brooklynites reported the most close encounters with 11, including an alleged Nov. 1 visit with “glowing orbs changing color…from red to green and orange.”

On Feb. 9, at about 10:45 p.m., another true believer said he spotted an “egg-shaped cylindrical object … with a solid light in front streak across the sky” over Brooklyn.

The eyewitness added, “I can barely see anything in the sky in Brooklyn, and I’ve seen my fair share of shooting stars. It was too discernible to be one. … I’m a pretty skeptical person, but after an hour of thinking about the event, I have no rational explanation for it.”

Two days later, on Feb. 11 around 7:15 p.m., two Staten Islanders were left spellbound while pumping gas.

“I looked West and witnessed a fireball traveling from west to east not too fast,” said one of the X-filers. “I said to a man pumping gas next to me: ‘Do you see that?’ He answered ‘yes.’ … It definitely was not fireworks or a flare. Because it kept the same steady trajectory until it was out of sight. It made no noise.”

Another Staten Islander reported being transfixed by an Aug. 3 air show at 9:27 p.m.

He said he was using a night-vision camera while “trying to film shooting stars and all of a sudden — boom — 3 UFOs/UAPs fly by from high to low and they went a full 180 degrees phasing in and out.

“All the hair on my body completely stood up.”

Staten Island reported six eerie episodes, while Manhattan had five sightings, followed by Queens and The Bronx, with three and two, respectively.

The reports to the Washington state-based UFO center provide time, place and wacky space snippets — but no smoking gun. The anonymous observers, much like the UFOs, are almost always unknown and rarely provide confirming photos or videos.

Overall, there were 156 sightings of flying saucers across the state this year.

“I think we are getting more credible reports than ever before,” Center director Peter Davenport told The Post on Friday. “I believe we are being visited routinely by these objects we call UFOs – and I presume they are controlled by extraterrestrial intelligence.”

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