{"id":113809,"date":"2019-01-16T17:24:24","date_gmt":"2019-01-16T21:24:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=113809"},"modified":"2019-01-16T17:27:20","modified_gmt":"2019-01-16T21:27:20","slug":"why-are-massive-amounts-of-aluminum-containing-chaff-being-dumped-on-illinois-kentucky-florida-maine-etc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=113809","title":{"rendered":"Why were massive amounts of aluminum-containing chaff dumped on Illinois, Kentucky, Florida, Maine, etc.?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1>More chaff? Evansville-area radar blips had an answer. These don&#8217;t.<\/h1>\n<p><!--more-->Jon Webb, Evansville Courier &amp; Press<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable-p-1 p-text\">The mystery was solved. Then it wasn\u2019t. Then it was.<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable-p-2 p-text\">Now, well, who knows?<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">Back on Dec. 10, the Evansville area was embroiled in intrigue when\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.courierpress.com\/story\/weather\/2018\/12\/10\/whats-up-sky-weather-radar-mystery-unfolds-tri-state\/2273535002\/\" data-track-label=\"inline|intext|n\/a\">mysterious radar blips<\/a>\u00a0appeared over Southern Illinois and Western Kentucky. The long lines baffled the National Weather Service because they looked like storms \u2013 but it wasn\u2019t raining.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedrive.com\/the-war-zone\/25451\/a-west-virginia-air-guard-c-130h-was-responsible-for-massive-chaff-cloud-over-midwest\" data-track-label=\"inline|intext|n\/a\">The War Zone<\/a>\u00a0eventually confirmed the anomalies arose when a C-130 traveling to West Virginia from a military exercise out west released over our area\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.courierpress.com\/story\/opinion\/columnists\/jon-webb\/2018\/12\/12\/radar-mystery-over-southern-illinois-kentucky-may-have-been-solved\/2293770002\/\" data-track-label=\"inline|intext|n\/a\">huge plumes of military chaff<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 radar-jamming material mostly composed of aluminum.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">Sounds reasonable. But it does nothing to explain what happened in Maine and Florida around the same time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">Similar blips materialized on radar over Portland, Maine, on Dec. 12. The National Weather Service there also guessed chaff was to blame.<\/p>\n<div id=\"module-position-RfXEFzzUly8\" class=\"story-asset image-asset\">\n<aside class=\"single-photo float\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/presto\/2019\/01\/15\/PEVC\/6d48fa04-ff0a-4191-b5bb-0383a3278bb0-maine_chaff.jpg?width=180&amp;height=240&amp;fit=bounds&amp;auto=webp\" alt=\"Radar blips are seen over Maine on Dec. 12. Military chaff was reportedly to blame.\" width=\"180\" data-mycapture-src=\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/presto\/2019\/01\/15\/PEVC\/6d48fa04-ff0a-4191-b5bb-0383a3278bb0-maine_chaff.jpg\" data-mycapture-sm-src=\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/presto\/2019\/01\/15\/PEVC\/6d48fa04-ff0a-4191-b5bb-0383a3278bb0-maine_chaff.jpg?width=225&amp;height=400\" \/>Radar blips are seen over Maine on Dec. 12. Military chaff was reportedly to blame.\u00a0<span class=\"credit\">(Photo: Courtesy of the National Weather Service)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"p-text\">But unlike here, no concrete explanation sprang forth.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">According to\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedrive.com\/the-war-zone\/25460\/now-massive-plumes-of-chaff-are-lighting-up-radar-over-maine-and-florida-too\" data-track-label=\"inline|intext|n\/a\">The War Zone<\/a>, the one Maine Air National Guard flying unit doesn\u2019t have any planes equipped to release chaff. And it\u2019s not like a plane from a different base would jet all the way to Maine just to spew chaff.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">That same day, strange radar shapes appeared over the Florida Keys, too. Again, the NWS guessed it was chaff \u2013 Florida is apparently rife with military exercises \u2013 but that hypothesis was never confirmed.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Appears to be <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Chaff?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#Chaff<\/a> also showing up on radar in SoFL <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/tkDDrNW6F9\">pic.twitter.com\/tkDDrNW6F9<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Chris Gloninger, CCM, CBM (@ChrisGloninger) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ChrisGloninger\/status\/1073018818686009344?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 13, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">All of it could really twist your brain into a labyrinth \u2013 especially if you like to indulge in conspiracy theories.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">And I heard from a lot of those folks when\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.courierpress.com\/story\/opinion\/columnists\/jon-webb\/2018\/12\/11\/source-mysterious-radar-blip-over-illinois-kentucky-still-mystery\/2280916002\/\" data-track-label=\"inline|intext|n\/a\">a story I wrote<\/a>\u00a0about the phenomenon landed on The Drudge Report.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">\u201cWe believe there is more to the story than what the FAA and military and publications such as \u2018The War Zone\u2019 are telling us,\u201d an investigator from the Mutual UFO Network told me in an email after the blips appeared over Illinois and Kentucky. \u201cThere are a high number of factoids that don&#8217;t add up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">Am I saying all this is an opening act for a giant extraterrestrial invasion? No. We\u2019re not that lucky. But whatever it is, it\u2019s exceedingly strange.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"presto-h2\">Chaff<\/h2>\n<p class=\"p-text\">If all these instances were caused by chaff, what kind of mass, nationwide exercise was the military conducting? And why was radar-jamming material so prominent?<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">It conjures another question, too: is it dangerous to have large amounts of this junk hovering in the atmosphere?<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">According to studies the Air Force and other government agencies have commissioned since the 1990s, military chaff poses little if any threat.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">\u201cBased on reviews of numerous toxicological studies, the key components of chaff (aluminum, silica glass fibers, and stearic acid) will not pose an adverse impact to human and environmental health,\u201d a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.globalsecurity.org\/military\/library\/report\/enviro\/1993-03-01608_rpt1.pdf\" data-track-label=\"inline|intext|n\/a\">1993 study<\/a>\u00a0found.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">It does, however, hover in the atmosphere for an inordinate amount of time \u2014 as much as\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nwtteis.com\/Portals\/nwtteis\/files\/2015-2016\/feis\/NWTT_FEIS_3.1_Sediments_and_Water_Quality_Oct_2015.pdf\" data-track-label=\"inline|intext|n\/a\">10 hours at a time<\/a>. So if these reported military exercises continue, you can expect more radar anomalies to crop up all over the country.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p-text\">More NWS hubs will get confused. And more conspiracies will be born.<\/p>\n<p>___<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.courierpress.com\/story\/opinion\/columnists\/jon-webb\/2019\/01\/15\/more-chaff-additional-blips-deepen-radar-mystery\/2583764002\/\">https:\/\/www.courierpress.com\/story\/opinion\/columnists\/jon-webb\/2019\/01\/15\/more-chaff-additional-blips-deepen-radar-mystery\/2583764002\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More chaff? Evansville-area radar blips had an answer. These don&#8217;t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=113809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113809\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=113809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=113809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=113809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}