Debunked: Hurricane Harvey, Project Stormfury, Conspiracy Theories

[Mick West]

After the record breaking rainfall of Hurricane Harvey we now have Hurricane Irma, the most powerful storm ever recorded in the Atlantic. Already devastating small outlying caribbean islands, it's heading for the larger British Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic/Haiti, Cuba and others, homes to million of people. Projections vary but it looks very possible that it will make landfall as a major hurricane in Florida sometime on Sunday.

The conspiracy oriented site Geoengineering Watch has already started to claim that Irma (and Harvey) were somehow deliberately created, steered, or intensified.
http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/hurricane-irma-manipulation-objectives-and-agendas/
[bunk]Were climate engineering programs a factor in the Harvey disaster scenario? Available data has already made clear the answer is yes. How much decimation will the manipulation of Hurricane Irma inflict? The US government has been actively engaged in hurricane modification programs for a minimum of 70 years, historical documents prove this fact conclusively. Yet, the power structure controlled circles of academia (and corporate media) continue to fuel total denial of the climate engineering hurricane modification reality, this should not be a surprise. [/bunk]The linked historical document is an overview of government weather modification research written in 1966 (51 years ago). It does indeed say

"The financial and other benefits to human welfare of being able to modify weather to augment water supplies, reduce lightning, suppress hail, mitigate tornados, and inhibit the full development of hurricanes would be very great. "

And yes it would. However this does not mean that they can actually do it. In fact the documents goes into detail that the only one of these things they actually think they could currently do with any success was augment water supplies by cloud seeding with small planes and ground based silver iodide generators. This is something that has been done since the 1950s. It does not steer hurricanes.

"Over the past twenty years experiments have been conducted on weather modification, particularly on the effects of seedinq clouds with - such materials as silver iodide crystals. The results are limited. Under suitable circumstances it has been possible to augment precipitation by ten to twenty percent, and to reduce the frequency of fire-producing lightning strokes. Effects on hail production have been noted, sometimes suppression and sometimes augmentation."

But no effects on hurricanes. When they discuss the current state of hurricane research they say:

"We can now describe the structure of a mature hurricane in great detail and can even estimate probable variations in the structure with time in the same hurricane or between hurricanes. Our knowledge of the structure of developing and dissipating tropical cyclones is less complete, but even in these cases many data have been collected and analyzed.

Great advances have been made in recent years in developing mathematical models of hurricanes. The most advanced of these models is now being used for partially evaluating simple modification hypotheses.

In spite of all the progress that has been made in hurricane research in recent years, much needs to be done before we can (1) gain an adequate understanding of many details of the energy processes in hurricanes, (2) satisfactorily explain or predict the formation and intensification of tropical cyclones, or (3) develop realistic and accurate dynamical numerical models of hurricanes."

So if 50 years ago they were in the very early stages of thinking about how they could modify a hurricane, would it not make sense to assume that now they would have figured it out?

Yes and no - they figured it out, but what they figured out was that it could not be done. There was actually a couple of decades in which hurricane modification research was done (most notable Operation Storm Fury) the research largely focussed on obtaining accurate measurements of the conditions around the genesis of a hurricane and its subsequent track and development, and then building predictive models.

NOAA did conduct several practical experiments in Hurricane modification, but the results were inconclusive. Hurricanes vary in their paths naturally, and any effect of the seeding was undetectable.
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/about_hrd/stormfury_era.html

The Experimental Meteorology Laboratory (EML) in collaboration with NHRLbegan the Florida Area Cumulus Experiment (FACE) in 1970. FACE, which was done in two segments, attempted to document the benefits of cloud seeding over the Florida peninsula. This, in turn, was supposed to prove the efficacy of seeding in modifying hurricanes. Instead the second segment, ending in 1983, proved inconclusive.
In 1971 STORMFURY experiments were flown into a late season Hurricane Ginger. Because of a dearth of candidate storms over the next few years and another hiatus as NOAA acquired new aircraft, this would be the last hurricane modification experiment flown under Project STORMFURY

However the research did pay off in a greater understanding of the physics of hurricanes and other storms. With that greater understanding came the realization that modification attempts were not going to work:

Project STORMFURY came to a formal end in 1982, as no hurricane modification experiments had been flown in over a decade, and as serious doubts about the assumptions of STORMFURY came to be expressed. In part the new cloud physics data showed that the amount of supercooled liquid water available in a hurricane was far less than had been thought, and studies of the natural cycles of storm strength showed that what were thought to be the effect of seeding might have been natural. HRD scientists published a paper in 1985 demonstrating many of the flaws in the original STORMFURY premises. Hurricane modification studies and experiments were shelved for the forseeable future.

The 1985 paper made this conclusion clear:

So far from 70 years of hurricane modification, there were two decades in the 1970s and 1980s when they looked into it, and eventually figured out it could not be done.

Hurricane modification is still a desirable goal. But the research focus is still on measuring, modelling, and predicting. The more we know about hurricanes, the less likely it seems that we will ever be able to control them with any degree of success. But research continues.

 

[SR1419]

Lost in GE Watch's hyperbole is that the attempts at modification were to mitigate- lessen- the impacts of Hurricanes. Moreover, all they really did was seed clouds much as it has been done for decades in more local storms...which is not secret.

GE Watch is basically torturing the data until it confesses.

 

[Trailblazer]

Coincidentally I came across this paper today (PDF attached), which discusses one possible method of reducing the intensity of Atlantic hurricanes using geoengineering techniques. It is authored by Stephen Salter, emeritus professor of engineering design at the University of Edinburgh, and is only a brief outline, but the idea would be to use marine cloud brightening (i.e. using ships to spray salt water into the air to add cloud nuclei, and thus increase the amount of low-level cloud over the sea). This would reduce the amount of sunlight heating the sea in the areas of the Atlantic where hurricanes form, which would make the sea cooler, thus reducing the amount of energy available to power hurricanes.

The image below shows sea surface temperatures along the hurricane-breeding path from Africa
to the Caribbean. Perhaps it is easier to stop them young.

Salter's calculations suggest that reducing the temperature of the top two metres of the sea in the relevant area by three degrees Celsius could be achieved with a fleet of 12 "spray vessels". But there are numerous caveats:

Uneven nucleus concentration. Not enough wind to drive spray vessels. Wind in the wrong
direction. Shorter nucleus life. Low cloud fraction. Competition from Sahara dust storms.
The need for some gentle hurricanes to provide water . . . . .

Again, though, it is important to note that this is just an idea to reduce the strength of hurricanes. Once a hurricane forms, it will do what it wants, and we are powerless to stop it.

 

[Mick West]

Lost in GE Watch's hyperbole is that the attempts at modification were to mitigate- lessen- the impacts of Hurricanes.

Indeed - their goal (which they did not achieve with any statistical certainty) was to reduce the intensity of the maximum wind. Made clear in the abstract:

 

[Trailblazer]

I find it pretty incredible that people ever seriously thought they could control hurricanes. (I guess it was that "can-do" attitude of the 1960s, when science seemed invincible and anything was possible!)

Just look at the amount of energy involved:

An average hurricane produces 1.5 cm/day (0.6 inches/day) of rain inside a circle of radius 665 km (360 n.mi) (Gray 1981). (More rain falls in the inner portion of hurricane around the eyewall, less in the outer rainbands.) Converting this to a volume of rain gives 2.1 x 1016​ cm3​/day. A cubic cm of rain weighs 1 gm. Using the latent heat of condensation, this amount of rain produced gives

5.2 x 1019​ Joules/day or
6.0 x 1014​ Watts.
This is equivalent to 200 times the world-wide electrical generating capacity - an incredible amount of energy produced!

(Source: NOAA)

For comparison, the yield of the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima was about 6.3 x 1013​ joules. Which means that a hurricane releases more than 800,000 times as much energy as the Hiroshima bomb in a single day, or almost 10 Hiroshima bombs per second. Good luck steering that!

 

[Mick West]

By "70 years" Wigington is probably referring to Project Cirrus in the late 1940s. This is mentioned in the Stormfury overview document.

Despite some initial skepticism about weather modification,
several U.S. Government agencies collaborated during
the late 1940s in a pioneering weather modification effort,
Project Cirrus. Among other notable firsts for Project Cirrus
was the first cloud seeding in a hurricane (Langmuir, 1948).
Before seeding began on 13 October 1947, the storm tracked
toward the northeast over the Atlantic Ocean off the coasts
of Georgia and North Florida. After seeding, observers
aboard the experimental aircraft noted changes in the visual
appearance of the clouds, but they could not demonstrate
any other effects on structure or intensity. The one indisputable
change—although apparently not the result of seeding
(Mook etal, 1957)—was a reversal of track toward the west,
which ultimately led to landfall on the coasts of Georgia and
South Carolina. Claims by Langmuir (Byers, 1974) that the
track had been influenced through human intervention were
an embarrassment at the time and left a legacy that had an
adverse effect upon political and legal arrangements for later
hurricane modification efforts.

This of course was well before they had figured out that seeding would have very little effect, and decades before any even partway accurate models of hurricanes could be built. Later ananysis showed the seeding did nothing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947_Cape_Sable_hurricane

Early on October 13, 1947, 200 pounds (3,200 oz) of dry ice were dropped throughout the storm, then located about 350 mi (560 km) east of Jacksonville, Florida. While the appearance of the clouds changed, the initial results of the seeding were inconclusive. Shortly after the seeding took place, the hurricane turned sharply toward the Southeastern United States. While the move the leading GE scientist later blamed upon the seeding, subsequent examination of the environment surrounding the storm determined that a large upper-level ridge was in fact responsible for the abrupt turn.[4]

ftp://ftp.library.noaa.gov/docs.lib/htdocs/rescue/mwr/085/mwr-085-07-0243.pdf

 

[Mick West]

The more extreme weather modification theorists (which include Geoengineering Watch) promote the idea that HAARP is responsible.

HAARP is a radio transmitter that can heat a small region of the ionosphere, far above the level where weather actually happens, vastly less than the daily variations from the sun, and only over a small region in Alaska. Since it does not affect the lower atmosphere, it can't even affect the weather over Alaska.

These theories are repeated every Hurricane, so I'll refer back to Sandy:

https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-hurricane-sandy-chemtrails-haarp-and-conspiracy-theories.t871/

 

[Mick West]

There's considerable uncertainty right now about what has happened to the low-lying island nation of Barbuda, population 1600. Nothing has been heard of the island since the eye of Irma hit 12 hours ago. Here it is inside the eye.

The was a statement from the Antigua and Barbuda PM, but it seems to be based on info from before the Hurricane hit.
https://www.abconsulate.nyc/single-...r-of-Antigua-and-Barbuda-after-hurricane-Irma

With regard to Barbuda, preliminary reports indicate damage to rooves and to some buildings, but I have had no report of any fatalities. Barbuda too benefited from a high level of readiness, responsive to the urgings of the government and from the preparations that were made in advance, including the shelter constructed for that purpose.

Antigua is a separate island, and was not in the direct path (it's due south of the eye in the image above.

We should know in a few hours.


Source: https://twitter.com/weathernetwork/status/905489286287552512

 

[deirdre]

Antigua and Barbuda, which had expected to be hit by the full force of the storm, were rattled early Wednesday, though daylight revealed that the damage was less than anticipated.

"My first words must be of thanks," began a statement from Prime Minister Gaston Browne of Antigua and Barbuda on Wednesday. "The forecast was that Antigua would be devastated, our infrastructure demolished, people killed and our economy destroyed. In the light of day, the picture is very different."

He said his office had received no reports of deaths on either island.

Preliminary reports from Barbuda, he said, "indicate damage" to roofs and "to some buildings." Irma tore the roof off a police station on Barbuda, forcing officers to take shelter in a nearby fire station, The Associated Press reported.

"The essential point is that our main infrastructure has stood up and our country can resume normal life within hours," Mr. Browne said, including reopening the airport for arriving and departing flights beginning at 2 p.m.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/world/americas/hurricane-irma-update.html

 

[Mick West]

Rush Limbaugh has a theory that the fear around Irma has been pumped up to sell more water and promote the science of climate change
https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2017/09/05/my-analysis-of-the-hurricane-irma-panic/

So there is a desire to advance this climate change agenda, and hurricanes are one of the fastest and best ways to do it. You can accomplish a lot just by creating fear and panic. You don't need a hurricane to hit anywhere. All you need is to create the fear and panic accompanied by talk that climate change is causing hurricanes to become more frequent and bigger and more dangerous, and you create the panic, and it's mission accomplished, agenda advanced.

Now, how do you do this? Well, any number of ways. Let's take south Florida television, for example. There is symbiotic relationship between retailers and local media, and it's related to money. It revolves around money. You have major, major industries and businesses which prosper during times of crisis and panic, such as a hurricane, which could destroy or greatly damage people's homes, and it could interrupt the flow of water and electricity. So what happens?

Well, the TV stations begin reporting this and the panic begins to increase. And then people end up going to various stores to stock up on water and whatever they might need for home repairs and batteries and all this that they're advised to get, and a vicious circle is created. You have these various retail outlets who spend a lot of advertising dollars with the local media.

He's just rambling, but he's still got a sizable audience.

 

[Mick West]

Antigua and Barbuda, which had expected to be hit by the full force of the storm, were rattled early Wednesday, though daylight revealed that the damage was less than anticipated.

"My first words must be of thanks," began a statement from Prime Minister Gaston Browne of Antigua and Barbuda on Wednesday. "The forecast was that Antigua would be devastated, our infrastructure demolished, people killed and our economy destroyed. In the light of day, the picture is very different."

He said his office had received no reports of deaths on either island.

Preliminary reports from Barbuda, he said, "indicate damage" to roofs and "to some buildings." Irma tore the roof off a police station on Barbuda, forcing officers to take shelter in a nearby fire station, The Associated Press reported.

"The essential point is that our main infrastructure has stood up and our country can resume normal life within hours," Mr. Browne said, including reopening the airport for arriving and departing flights beginning at 2 p.m.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/world/americas/hurricane-irma-update.html

That preliminary report seems to be from before they lost contact 12 hours ago. There's still nothing since then.

 

[Whitebeard]

There's an International Red Cross rep on BBC news 24 now, he said communications with Barbuda 'are being re-established' but couldn't say any more.

 

[Mick West]

http://www.express.co.uk/news/weath...dels-update-Barbuda-contact-lost-damage-video

Karen-Mae Hill, Antigua and Barbuda's High Commissioner, told Sky News all contact with the island was lost shortly after midnight.

She said: "We have not been able to make any contact with Barbuda since about midnight UK time.

"The last report we had from our sister island was the police station was destroyed, the roof came off completely. Houses all around Codrington, the main settlement on Barbuda, have lost their roofs.

"We have no reports of fatalities or injuries but we do to know how things are on the island as we speak."

So basically the last they heard building were losing their roofs, but they have heard nothing since. That would have been when the first half of the hurricane hit.

 

[Mick West]

THey just sent a Helicopter from Antigua to Barbuda (35 miles away)

https://www.facebook.com/abstvradio/posts/1505273812905171

Due to delays caused by weather conditions, Prime Minister Gaston Browne has departed for Barbuda.

Prime Minister will provide a telephone update from Barbuda. He is also accompanied by an ABS staffer.

In the #Barbuda twitter stream there's a mixture of people being relieved because they are hearing versions of the "no fatalities" report (from 12 hours ago), and people who realize there's been no communication.

There's going to be "Fake News" accusations on this one, regardless of what the situation is (and it's unlikely to be good).

 

[deirdre]

In the #Barbuda twitter stream there's a mixture of people being relieved because they are hearing versions of the "no fatalities" report (from 12 hours ago), and people who realize there's been no communication.

There's going to be "Fake News" accusations on this one, regardless of what the situation is (and it's unlikely to be good).

al jeezer says the storm hit before 6GMT. that's 3pm? Barbuda time? I'm so bad with time zones.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/09/hurricane-irma-major-damage-caribbean-170906125629286.html

 

[deirdre]

and Karen-Mae Hill said 12:30 UK time but cnn says, I'm just trying to figure out the time frame as the PM seems pretty calm .. although flooding may be a serious issue. :/

A later statement from the Antigua and Barbuda Meteorological Services said there had been no reports so far of deaths and that "the preliminary report is indicating that damage across Antigua and Barbuda is minimal."
Before communications went down about 12:30 a.m. local time, it said, "the Barbuda Weather Station, monitored by the Met Office, recorded sustained winds of 119 mph and gusts of 150 mph."

 

[Mick West]

ABS TV say "It does not look good AT ALL". They are confirming some bad news. Live stream:
https://www.facebook.com/abstvradio/videos/1505259686239917/

 

[Mick West]

Prime Minister reporting 90% of homes on Barbuda destroyed.

Asked about fatalities, but lost connection on satellite phone.

 

[Mick West]

Mention of 1,000 structures seemed to lead to reports of 1,000 fatalities on Twitter. Totally unfounded. I listened to the ABS broadcast. However lots of people are Twitter are repeating the rumour.

 

[deirdre]

4:44 pm est he just made a joke about how the hurricane cleaned some [contaminate] out of the sky that made his cell phone work better.

 

[deirdre]

Mention of 1,000 structures seemed to lead to reports of 1,000 fatalities on Twitter. Totally unfounded. I listened to the ABS broadcast. However lots of people are Twitter are repeating the rumour.

yes they are saying (unofficial report) 1 fatality.. and they posted that on FB too.

 

[Svartbjørn]

Moreover, all they really did was seed clouds much as it has been done for decades in more local storms...which is not secret.

Camille is the biggest one that I know of that comes to mind. Id heard stories, growing up, about Hurricane Camille, and the cloud seeding that took place that made Camille stronger instead of weaker.. which is kind of what got me interested in meteorology when I was younger. I wanted to know what went wrong and why the experiment failed.

Id heard all these stories from my mom. Normally, my mom's rather rational but I cant remember the number of times she swore up and down that it was a government conspiracy to control the weather and that it either "got out of control" or was an experiment to try to make it stronger so that storms could be weaponized. From the sounds of things, this conspiracy appears to be an extension of that same type of thinking.

 

[deirdre]

Prime Minister just on ABS live. He confirmed one known fatality. Later many residents told of their nights, one fireman and one male resident confirmed 1 fatality (known) also. These last gentlemen described the fatality as "a little infant", "little child"

Helicopter video of the communications tower (looked like a cell tower type of thing, metal) broken in a few pieces. Residents state the eye came shortly after that. Rescue personnel went out during eye. Most residents stayed in homes. less than 200 in the shelters.

No mandatory evacuation in place, although residents (Prime Minister) encouraged to shelter on Antigua. Mandatory evac if Jose looks like it will hit there. many currently homeless.

 

[deirdre]

the Washington Post has some Irma hoax debunks, this video for example although WP and CNN catn seem to find the origin

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...oaxes-about-the-storm/?utm_term=.264f1bfd50c1

It is a tornado that went through Dolores, Uruguay April 15, 2016

https://www.google.com/maps/@-33.53...4!1sXdv1Et-q2nEByuHF6OpE_g!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

possibly filmed by Ernesto Martinez

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lHDVel-NPw

 

[Graham2001]

Getting back to the science of cloud modification. I stumbled across a page which actually discusses a 1950s proposal for using an atomic weapon to 'steer' a hurricane, what it makes quite clear is that claims that HAARP can steer hurricanes just would not work, the energy requirements are just too high.

You can't just blast a hurricane apart with a hydrogen bomb. Even an H-bomb doesn't pack enough energy; a typical hurricane puts out the equivalent of ten megatons every twenty minutes. Manmade devices just can't compete with the forces of nature - or can they?

An H-bomb can't blast a hurricane apart, but a megaton is still a lot of energy. Perhaps one could find a fulcrum, a place to put that energy where it would have a disproportionate impact. That was the thinking of Jack W. Reed, a meteorologist at Sandia Laboratory.

http://atomic-skies.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/nuking-hurricanes.html

I know of at least one author who was probably aware of the concept described, Wilbur Smith's novel 'Hungry As The Sea' (1978) climaxes with a hurricane being disrupted by a fuel-air explosion (The fuel is the cargo of a gargantuan ULCC) set off in the eye of the storm.

 

[Mick West]

Hurricanes to scale:

 

[skephu]

Don't forget about the more recent HAMP (Hurricane Aerosol Microphysics Project), which had promising results but was defunded in 2010.

 

[Mick West]

Don't forget about the more recent HAMP (Hurricane Aerosol Microphysics Project), which had promising results but was defunded in 2010.

I had forgotten them. But they were largely a computer modelling effort, and never actually sprayed anything.
http://weathermodification.org/publications/index.php/JWM/article/download/152/199

In spite of its short period of existence, a great deal
was accomplished during HAMP. The research
supports the original hypotheses proposed by Cotton
et al. (2007), Rosenfeld et al. (2007), and Khain
et al. (2008) that seeding with high concentrations
of pollution sized aerosold can lead to significant weakening of
a storm. This was demonstrated by simulations of
both idealized storms and actual case studies and
with advanced bin-emulating microphysics and
spectral bin microphysics. It was also evident in
satellite analysis of actual storms.

The case studies were computer models using data from storms, not actual spraying.

They did study the effects of actual aerosols from pollution - but that was pre-existing pollution plumes.

And none of that was steering or intensify the storm, just reducing the intensity. By 20% in their simulations.

 

[Graham2001]

Snopes is covering claims that the people behind the 'geoengineering' behaved as all fictional villains do and left clues in popular entertainment for conspiracy theorists to find. Needless to say, it's more scaremongering that relies on people not checking the 'facts' they are served.

In September 2017, rumors emerged on social media that a 2005 movie predicted current events by featuring two hurricanes named Harvey and Irma — and that this somehow proved that the hurricanes were both human-engineered.

...
Category 7: End of the World was a two-part made-for-TV movie broadcast by CBS on 6 and 7 November 2005. It's an apocalyptic thriller directed by Dick Lowry and starring Shannon Doherty about a series of extreme weather events that cause destruction around the world.

A hurricane named Eduardo strikes Florida and Washington D.C. while an unnamed Category 6 storm hits New York. Eventually the two combine, causing the movie's eponymous Category 7 storm which threatens a global catastrophe.

None of the storms or hurricanes in the movie are called Harvey or Irma. Furthermore, Category 7: End of the World was broadcast on 6 and 13 November 2005 – which was 11 years and 10 months (not nine months) before Hurricane Irma's expected landfall in Florida on 10 September 2017. So the meme's two key claims are false.

http://www.snopes.com/category-7-harvey-irma/

 

[Landru]

Snopes is covering claims that the people behind the 'geoengineering' behaved as all fictional villains do and left clues in popular entertainment for conspiracy theorists to find. Needless to say, it's more scaremongering that relies on people not checking the 'facts' they are served.

In September 2017, rumors emerged on social media that a 2005 movie predicted current events by featuring two hurricanes named Harvey and Irma — and that this somehow proved that the hurricanes were both human-engineered.

...

A hurricane named Eduardo strikes Florida and Washington D.C. while an unnamed Category 6 storm hits New York. Eventually the two combine, causing the movie's eponymous Category 7 storm which threatens a global catastrophe.

http://www.snopes.com/category-7-harvey-irma/

Well since there is no such thing as a category 7 storm we can conclude that this is not true. Which Snopes did.

 

[Whitebeard]

Surprising they haven't mentioned this one yet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geostorm

In the near future, when climate-controlling satellites malfunction and release disaster-creating small pods all over the world, Jake Lawson (Gerard Butler) and his other fellow astronauts head into space to prevent the satellites from programming the small pods into creating a storm of epic proportions. They soon discover that the disasters weren't caused by a malfunction, but were done with intention and the only person who has the kill codes to shut down the satellites is President Andrew Palma (Andy García)

 

[Graham2001]

Well since there is no such thing as a category 7 storm we can conclude that this is not true. Which Snopes did.

The film is (bad) fiction, but there is a trend amongst conspiracy theorists to seek out what they see as clues to what 'they' are doing to the world in popular media, if you search YouTube, you can still find videos that the creators claim 'prove' that the people behind 9/11 sprinkled clues to what they had planned throughout kids cartoons in the years leading up to the events.

 

[Mick West]

Now Irma is dissipating, attention will move to Jose, which looked like it was going to miss the US, but now is going to do a 360 and line up for a possible East Coast landfall in a week.

 

[Zachary Mckenzie]

Fantastic job, I really enjoy your work on this site. I have something to ask; recently I've came across a claim that the government is using advanced radar technology to manipulate the recent storms in the gulf, he even went so far as to claim that it can cause earthquakes. Here is his quote....."Do you know what the x for on sbx1/ x47b/? They are all work the same as NEXRAD wrs 88. X band is well known and documented as being able to manipulate base frequencies around their stations. This can be as simple as moving low pressure systems or causing a earthquake" he ended with an insult. I was wondering, how much truth to his words are their? If any at all that is.

 

[Mick West]

Fantastic job, I really enjoy your work on this site. I have something to ask; recently I've came across a claim that the government is using advanced radar technology to manipulate the recent storms in the gulf, he even went so far as to claim that it can cause earthquakes. Here is his quote....."Do you know what the x for on sbx1/ x47b/? They are all work the same as NEXRAD wrs 88. X band is well known and documented as being able to manipulate base frequencies around their stations. This can be as simple as moving low pressure systems or causing a earthquake" he ended with an insult. I was wondering, how much truth to his words are their? If any at all that is.

None. Ask him for the documentation.

 

[skephu]

Do you know what the x for on sbx1/ x47b/? They are all work the same as NEXRAD wrs 88. X band is well known and documented as being able to manipulate base frequencies around their stations.

NEXRAD works in the S band as far as I know.
I have no idea what "manipulating base frequencies" means and how that would be somehow related to weather or earthquakes.

 

[Trailblazer]

Fantastic job, I really enjoy your work on this site. I have something to ask; recently I've came across a claim that the government is using advanced radar technology to manipulate the recent storms in the gulf, he even went so far as to claim that it can cause earthquakes. Here is his quote....."Do you know what the x for on sbx1/ x47b/? They are all work the same as NEXRAD wrs 88. X band is well known and documented as being able to manipulate base frequencies around their stations. This can be as simple as moving low pressure systems or causing a earthquake" he ended with an insult. I was wondering, how much truth to his words are their? If any at all that is.

"X-band" just refers to the frequency range. X is roughly in the 3mm 3cm wavelength, or 10 gigahertz frequency.

Doppler radar can be divided into several different categories according to the wavelength of the radar. The different bands are L,S,C,X,K. The names of the radars originate from the days of WWII.

L band radars operate on a wavelength of 15-30 cm and a frequency of 1-2 GHz. L band radars are mostly used for clear air turbulence studies.

S band radars operate on a wavelength of 8-15 cm and a frequency of 2-4 GHz. Because of the wavelength and frequency, S band radars are not easily attenuated. This makes them useful for near and far range weather observation. The National Weather Service (NWS) uses S band radars on a wavelength of just over 10 cm. The drawback to this band of radar is that it requires a large antenna dish and a large motor to power it. It is not uncommon for a S band dish to exceed 25 feet in size.

C band radars operate on a wavelength of 4-8 cm and a frequency of 4-8 GHz. Because of the wavelength and frequency, the dish size does not need to be very large. This makes C band radars affordable for TV stations. The signal is more easily attenuated, so this type of radar is best used for short range weather observation. The frequency allows C band radars to create a smaller beam width using a smaller dish.
C band radars also do not require as much power as an S band radar. The NWS transmits at 750,000 watts of power for their S band, where as a private TV station such as KCCI-TV in Des Moines only broadcasts at 270,000 watts of power with their C band radar.

X band radars operate on a wavelength of 2.5-4 cm and a frequency of 8-12 GHz. Because of the smaller wavelength, the X band radar is more sensitive and can detect smaller particles. These radars are used for studies on cloud development because they can detect the tiny water particles and also used to detect light precipitation such as snow. X band radars also attenuate very easily, so they are used for only very short range weather observation. Also, due to the small size of the radar, it can therefore be portable like the Doppler on Wheels. (DOW) Most major airplanes are equipped with an X band radar to pick up turbulence and other weather phenomenon. This band is also shared with some police speed radars and some space radars.

K band radars operate on a wavelength of .75-1.2 cm or 1.7-2.5 cm and a corresponding frequency of 27-40 GHz and 12-18 GHz. This band is split down the middle due to a strong absorption line in water vapor. This band is similar to the X band but is just more sensitive. This band also shares space with police radars.

Source: http://www.everythingweather.com/weather-radar/bands.shtml

There's nothing special about X-band. The short wavelength means it has a high resolution but only a short range.

"X band is well known and documented as being able to manipulate base frequencies around their stations. This can be as simple as moving low pressure systems or causing a earthquake" is just meaningless. "Base frequencies" of what? They are just rather low-powered radio transmitters. Radio waves can't move atmospheric pressure systems around, or cause earthquakes.

As @skephu says, Nexrad radar is S-band, not X-band, so the claim that "they all work the same" is also incorrect.

 

[Spectrar Ghost]

NEXRAD works in the S band as far as I know.
I have no idea what "manipulating base frequencies" means and how that would be somehow related to weather or earthquakes.

This is correct. X-band weather radars are rarely used outside research applications, because the resolution is so fine.

 

[skephu]

X is roughly in the 3mm wavelength

3 cm.

 

[Trailblazer]

3 cm.

Oops. Corrected, thanks.