Nothing to see here: Military Chaff?: Unnatural man made Aerosols? What say you?

The mystery was solved. Then it wasn’t. Then it was.

Now, well, who knows?

Back on Dec. 10, the Evansville area was embroiled in intrigue when mysterious radar blips appeared over Southern Illinois and Western Kentucky. The long lines baffled the National Weather Service because they looked like storms – but it wasn’t raining.

The War Zone eventually confirmed the anomalies arose when a C-130 traveling to West Virginia from a military exercise out west released over our area huge plumes of military chaff – radar-jamming material mostly composed of aluminum.

Chaff

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?

It conjures another question, too: is it dangerous to have large amounts of this junk hovering in the atmosphere?

“Based 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,” a 1993 study found.

It does, however, hover in the atmosphere for an inordinate amount of time — as much as 10 hours at a time. So if these reported military exercises continue, you can expect more radar anomalies to crop up all over the country.

Link: [link to www.courierpress.com (secure)]