I'll take a stab at the answer, but I don't really know for sure.

I am not endowed with the patience of an angel; but what could I do? The retreat to my room was cut off, they had been washing the floor for Sunday, and the room was no doubt steaming with vapour from the damp boards.

There are also other reasons to account for differences between British English on the one hand and American and Commonwealth English on the other.

The article describes a federally funded program that investigated reports of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs, the take-me-seriously acronym that includes UFOs). And within the story, the Times embedded videos of two such UAPs.