The United States has lost its mind, with conspiracy theorists and fringe science obsessives ruling the coop. With far-right weather-related conspiracies reaching the mainstream political machine, it was only a matter of time before conspiracy theory-fueled militias cropped up, hell-bent on destroying the weather radars we rely on to understand if it’s going to rain tomorrow or when and exactly where a hurricane will hit.
A militia group called Veterans on Patrol has decided that Doppler weather radars are actually weather weapons. The same technology used to tell you when to bring an umbrella or hide from a tornado is now, according to this gang of goateed cargo pant enthusiasts, a tool of government mind control or something.
I am being vague about what they believe Doppler radars are doing because they don’t seem to know that themselves, according to reports. NEXRAD, as the weather systems are called, have been up and running since the 90s. They track precipitation in the air so we can predict rainfall, and help us track tornadoes and severe thunderstorms so we can push out warnings that save lives.
And it’s not just used by your favorite local news meteorologist. The Air Force relies on them for flight conditions, and, of course, the Federal Aviation Administration uses them to track weather conditions affecting every commercial airline flight in the United States.
While normal, sane people who haven’t had their brains poisoned by conspiracy-fueled right-wing media know what these weather radar devices do, these patrolling veterans don’t seem to have a single agreed-upon unifying idea of what these things do, but they are definitely 100 percent wholeheartedly sure that they are weapons of some kind maybe.
The group is reportedly encouraging people to run “penetration drills” on NEXRAD radar sites. According to internal emails from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, members of the group have been casing radar sites and encouraging others to sabotage them.
Apparently, they defined patriotism as destroying the machine that lets people know an F5 tornado is heading toward their town.
The National Weather Service is now advising staff to work in pairs, avoid confrontations, and not engage with any suspicious militia-looking folks. The NOAA security office says it is aware of “several encounters” with Veterans on Patrol. The FBI is currently investigating.
All this comes at a time when the National Weather Service has been decimated by unnecessary Trump layoffs. Over 90 technician positions are unfilled, an especially troubling note considering we are in the middle of tornado season and on the verge of hurricane season. Though we might already be screwed since, according to interviews with current and former meteorologists, the National Weather Service is in such bad shape after the Trump layoffs that many in and around the NWS fear it will not be able to adequately perform its duties, with disastrous consequences looming on the horizon.
It’s safe to say that even the weather has been so severely politicized by far-right extremism, both embedded deeply within the government and outside of it in the form of militias that, from here on out, you are on your own and can’t even get a reliable source of information to stay up-to-date on how to protect yourself. Good luck.
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