Conspiracy theorists stormed to social media after a strange glitch appeared on a weather monitoring app, claiming a government organisation is controlling the weather.
The glitch saw a ring of rain expanding towards a town in Australia called Bairnsdale, and people thought it was manmade.
Theorists took to social media straight away to speculate on the strange formation. Many users claimed that the strange weather sensation was caused by an organisation called HAARP.
The High-frequency Active Auroral Research Programme (HAARP) is a scientific project which studies the atmosphere of earth using a series of complex satellites and antennas.
Social media users were quick to suggest they were behind the strange phenomenon, as well as suggesting their antennas could even be altering our thoughts.
One user said the so-called rain explosion was proof “they weren’t being discreet to anyone”.
Another, perhaps light-heartedly, said the image was proof of “Government controlling our weather again”.
A Climate Feedback report was released in 2021 in an attempt to refute conspiracy theories that the HAARP facility and its supposed ability to manipulate the weather, cause natural disasters and even affect human thought.
“The facility is a high-frequency (shortwave radio) transmitter and doesn’t transmit low-frequency vibrations,” the report said.
“HAARP analyses physics phenomena in the uppermost part of the atmosphere (known as the ionosphere) by studying the small heating effects the transmitter creates there that last for only a few seconds. Thus, it cannot affect human thought processes or movements in any way.”
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Social media users claim that the weather reading was just more proof of HAARP’s meddling in the weather.
However, HAARP themselves claim that they are nothing but purely scientific.
“The ionosphere stretches roughly 50 to 400 miles above Earth‘s surface, right at the edge of space. Along with the neutral upper atmosphere, the ionosphere forms the boundary between Earth’s lower atmosphere — where we live and breathe — and the vacuum of space,” the organisation said in a statement.
According to the University of Alaska, the HAARP programme is “committed to developing a world-class ionospheric research facility”, consisting of a “high power transmitter facility operating in the High Frequency.
"This includes a variety of top quality equipment, including satellite beacons, telescopes for observation and a sophisticated suite of scientific or diagnostic instruments that can be used to observe the physical processes that occur in the excited region."
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