Humans Have Intentionally Modified Weather for Military Purposes and Climate Control for Decades

Source : Pakalert Press

Washington’s Blog

Weather modification is a well-known endeavor. For example, governments have been seeding clouds for decades to create more rain.

And during warfare to create mud to slow the enemy’s ability to use roads.

As the Guardian reported in 2001:

During the Vietnam war, the Americans launched Project Popeye, a secret mission to seed the tops of monsoon clouds and trigger phenomenal downpours that would wash away the Ho Chi Minh Trail used for ferrying supplies.For five years Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos were sprayed during the monsoons, and military intelligence claimed that rainfall was increased by a third in some places. It only came to an end in March 1971 when [Washington Post] journalist Jack Anderson exposed the project and caused such a public furor that the UN general assembly approved a universal treaty banning environmental warfare.

But the US air force planners recently came up with new proposals to launch new weather weapons. Instead of silver-iodide, the idea is to shower fine particles of heat-absorbing carbon over clouds to trigger localised flooding and bog down troops and their equipment. Lasers on aircraft would also trigger lightning onto enemy aircraft, whilst other lasers could be fired at fog to clear a path over enemy targets on the ground.

Whether or not they work, past experiences tell us to be wary of tampering with the weather. In 1947, meteorologists tried to kill off a dying hurricane out at sea by seeding the clouds. The following day, the hurricane suddenly gathered strength, swung round and hit Savannah, Georgia causing extensive damage. The weather boffins were so rattled by the disaster it was not until August 1969 that they dared try again.

When Hurricane Debbie was 700 miles out at sea, they flew three seeding missions around its eye, where tropical storms are at their most intense, but the results were mixed – with each seeding the hurricane’s winds were reduced and each time they picked up again.

Interestingly, U.S. weather modification efforts during the Vietnam war were revealed as part of the Pentagon Papers.

As the Washington Post reported on July 2, 1972:

Indochina – by the evidence of a long-ignored passage in the Pentagon Papers – has been a test battleground, the site of purposeful rain-making along the Ho Chi Minh trails.

***

Sen. Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.) is prominent among members of Congress who believe it has become a reality. “There is very little doubt in my mind,” he says. Rep. Gilbert Gude (R-Md.) states: “There’s no doubt in my mind that it’s going on in Vietnam.”

“I think there’s no doubt rain-making was used in Laos on the trail,” says a Senate committee aide wee versed in defense affairs.

***

It is a “successful” pre-1967 use which is documented in the “senator Gravel” version of the Pentagon papers. In late February, 1967, this document discloses the Joint Chiefs of Staff prepared a list of “alternative strategies” for President Johnson.

One, titled “Laos Operations”, read:

“Continue at present plus Operation Pop Eye to reduce trafficability along infiltration routes … authorization required to implement phase of weather modification process previously successfully tested and evaluated in same area. (Italics added)

In 1967 — according to columnist Jack Anderson, who published the first allegation of Indochina rain-making — U.S. forces started secret Project Intermediary Compatriot “to hamper enemy logistics” … (with) claimed success in creating man-made cloudbursts … and flooding conditions” along the Ho Chi Minh trails, “making them impassable.”

The Post makes clear that cloud-seeding wasn’t limited to the Vietnam war theater:

The Defense Department freely reports that it has “field capacities” for making rain. It used them in the Philippines in 1969, in a six-month “precipitation augmentation project” at the Philippines request; in India in 1967, at a similar invitation; over Okinawa and Midway Islands, and in June, July and August, 1971, over drought-stricken Texas, at the urgent request of Gov. Preston Smith.

***

Navy rain-makers are currently involved in two long-range California programs — one over the Pacific off Santa Barbara, an attempt to increase rainfall over a national forest; the other over the Central Sierras to try to increase the snow-pack for electric utilities that depend on water power.

In 2008, the Denver Post noted the enormous scope of weather modification projects:

Scientists are monitoring more than 150 weather-modification projects in 40 countries, including at least 60 in the Western United States. The projects include wringing additional snow out of clouds for California hydropower and easing droughts in sub-Saharan Africa.

Most of the current research on this inexact science is being conducted abroad ….

In 2005, the Boston Globe provided an account of the early discovery of silver iodide as a tool for modifying weather:

In 1946, over Mount Greylock in western Massachusetts, a General Electric research chemist named Vincent Schaefer scattered three pounds of crushed dry ice out of an airplane into a cloud and set off a snow flurry. It was the world’s first successful cloud seeding-later that year, the meteorologist Bernard Vonnegut (brother to the novelist) discovered that silver iodide smoke had a similar effect-and weather modification emerged from the realm of con men and eccentrics. Most meteorologists remained skeptical, but by 1951, 10 percent of the United States was under commercial cloud seeding.

“Intervention in atmospheric and climatic matters on any desired scale” was only decades away, predicted John von Neumann, the mathematician who helped invent and began programming the first electronic computers to model the weather. Over the next 30 years, the federal government spent hundreds of millions of dollars on projects all over the country to increase precipitation, to mitigate hailstorms (an age-old enemy of farmers), and, most successfully, to clear the fog from around airports. Perhaps the era’s most ambitious endeavor was Project Stormfury, which sent up airplanes to seed the eye walls of hurricanes with silver iodide to weaken the winds before landfall.

(And see this discussion by an MIT scientist regarding the use of weather modification to mitigate hurricane damage.)

Moreover, the Post points out that – even in 1972 – weather modification has been tested for other applications as well:

Among patterns that can be predictably” be modified [Robert M. White, the current chief of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ] said, are: cold fog (which can be cleared from airfields) ; cumulus clouds (most common in the tropics — “In Florida,”, White said, “we have been able almost at will to make them grow explosively”); orographic clouds (moist air moving up over mountains — “At the right temperature you can begin thinking of milking them for water”) and hailstorms (which can often be suppressed, according to recent claims by the Russians, who fire silver iodide into them from rockets and artillery).

And – as the Post notes – even in 1972, the government was studying the affect of weather modification on climate:

ARPA Director Stephen J. Lukasik told the Senate Appropriations Committee in March: “Since it now appears highly probable that major world powers have the ability to create modifications of climate that might be seriously detrimental to the security of this country, Nile Blue [a computer simulation] was established in FY 70 to achieve a US capability to (1) evaluate all consequences of of a variety of possible actions … (2) detect trends in in the global circulation which foretell changes … and (3) determine if possible , means to counter potentially deleterious climatic changes …”

“What this means,” Lukasik explains, “is learning how much you have to tickle the atmosphere to perturb the earth’s climate. I guess we’d call it a threat assessment.”

The Post also quoted high-level scientists warning that enemies could modify weather as a direct form of warfare, for example, by flooding coastal areas where one’s enemy resided.

Now, weather modification is so mainstream that Texas openly discusses it’s cloud-seeding programs.

And U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas introduced the Weather Modification Research And Technology Transfer Authorization Act in 2004, saying:

Weather modification is the general term that refers to any human attempt to alter the weather…. These efforts have been used in the U.S. for more than 50 years to reduce crop and property damage, optimize useable precipitation during growing seasons and lessen the impact of periodic, often severe droughts.

The weather modification projects in Texas and other States in the U.S. are much more than well considered responses to drought. They are trying to use the latest technological developments in the science to chemically squeeze more precipitation out of clouds. Moisture that is needed to replenish fresh-water supplies in aquifers and reservoirs.

(The bill apparently didn’t pass)

There’s even a Journal of Weather Modification (here’s a peek inside).

The Technology Has Advanced Far Beyond Seeding Clouds With Silver Iodide

The technology has advanced a long way since the early 1970s.

For example, the Telegraph reported yesterday that Abu Dhabi ‘creates man-made rainstorms’ by “using giant ionisers, shaped like giant lampshades, to generate fields of negatively charged particles, which create cloud formation.” “There are many applications,” Professor Hartmut Grassl, a former institute director, is quoted by the Daily Mail as saying. “One is getting water into a dry area. Maybe this is a most important point for mankind.”

And former secretary of defense William Cohen told a conference on terrorism on April 28, 1997 that people can:

Alter the climate … remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves.

The Use of Sulfur Dioxide to Affect Climate?

Tom Wigley – senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and former director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and current – has proposed releasing sulfur dioxide in the upper atmosphere to reflect sunlight and reduce warming. And see this.

Wigley talks about this proposal in a Discovery channel special on weather modification.

Other scientists have suggested the same thing. See – by way of example only – this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this.

More History … and Complicated Issues to Consider for the Future

The above-described Boston Globe article pointed to the complexity of the issues involved in weather modification:

In 2003 the National Academy of Sciences recommended “a coordinated national program” to “conduct a sustained research effort” into weather modification.

Politicians in Western and Southwestern states are funding attempts to tickle more moisture out of the clouds ….

Last fall, a meteorologist named Ross Hoffman suggested in Scientific American that a network of microwave-beaming satellites could literally take the wind out of hurricanes.

In some of the driest parts of Mexico, a Bedford-based company called Ionogenics is testing a rainmaking apparatus that uses an array of steel poles to ionize the air.

China, a country with widespread cloud seeding, has announced plans to engineer clear weather in Beijing for the 2008 Olympics.

Meanwhile, deepening concern over the possibly cataclysmic effects of climate change has spurred a number of recent proposals, some sketched out in considerable detail, to engineer a measure of counteractive cooling. John Latham, an atmospheric physicist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., has proposed increasing the reflectivity of the cloud cover by stirring up water vapor from the ocean with a fleet of giant egg-beater-like turbines.

A few years ago, a team led by the late Edward Teller suggested creating a similar effect by launching a million tons of tiny aluminum balloons into the atmosphere.

***

As our ability to comprehend the weather improves and as the threat of climate change looms larger, some scientists are ready to brave the uncertainty and tangled ethics of tinkering with the skies. . . .

The US military, unsurprisingly, was intrigued by the possibility of a godlike meteorological arsenal. According to Spencer Weart, a physicist and historian of science at the American Institute of Physics, the thinking in the Defense Department was “maybe we’ll give the Russians a real Cold War, or maybe they’ll give us one, so we should be ready.” Pentagon money funded much of the era’s climate research, helping to create the weather models we now use in forecasting. War gamers dreamed up climatological warfare scenarios like laying down a blanket of fog over an airfield or visiting drought upon an enemy’s breadbasket.

***

But the grandest climate engineering schemes came from the Soviet Union. The most Promethean among them was a late 1950s proposal to dam the Bering Strait and, by pumping water from the Arctic Ocean into the Pacific, draw warm water northward from the Atlantic to melt the polar ice pack, making the Arctic Ocean navigable and warming Siberia. The leading Soviet climatologist, Mikhail I. Budyko, cautioned against it, arguing that the ultimate effects were too difficult to predict (though he himself had played with the idea of warming the Arctic by covering it in soot to decrease its reflectivity). John F. Kennedy, as a presidential candidate, suggested the United States look into collaborating on the project. While the two countries continued desultory discussions of the Bering Strait plan into the 1970s, the American government was by then losing interest in the whole field of weather modification.

***

In 1972, a government cloud-seeding run in South Dakota was followed by a violent deluge, and more than 200 people were killed in the ensuing flood. Meteorologists disagreed over whether seeding was to blame, but the incident became an ominous symbol for those who saw weather modifiers as latter-day Pandoras. . . . Boyle’s caution may be merited, but scientists are better equipped today to understand and manipulate the weather than they were 30 years ago.

***

Some scientists and engineers, such as Daniel Schrag, director of Harvard’s Laboratory for Geochemical Oceanography, point out that, in light of the planet’s growing thirst and rising temperature, even Soviet-scale climate modification is attracting real consideration. Boyle, who spoke at a joint MIT-Cambridge University conference on the topic last year, readily concedes, “There are very prominent, serious scientists who are considering these things.”

***

A 1996 Air Force report entitled “Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025,” argued that “the tremendous military capabilities that could result from this field are ignored at our own peril.”

***

Even purely peaceful aims would lead to a cascade of seemingly zero-sum conflicts. In the US, cloud seeding has set off several lawsuits in which, for example, downwind farmers have accused a cloud-seeding neighbor of “stealing” their rain. Such issues only grow in complexity along with the scale.

***

According to Joe Kaplinsky, a technology analyst in London, “To raise these things before the technology has really gotten off the ground is to deprive us of the potential benefits of any technology, because any technology can be misused.” “Of course some people will benefit and some people will lose,” Kaplinsky says, “but there are social mechanisms for solving disagreements, either through compensation or through democratic debate.”

Here is a copy of the Air Force study “Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025″.

The American Institute of Physics – the organization mentioned in the Boston Globe article – provides an interesting overview of the history of weather modification:

From 1945 into the 1970s, much effort went into studies of weather modification. American entrepreneurs tried cloud-seeding to enhance local rainfall, Russian scientists offered fabulous schemes of planetary engineering, and military agencies secretly explored “climatological warfare.”

***

In the mid 1970s … Research turned instead to controversial “geoengineering” schemes for interventions that might restrain global warming if it started to become unbearable.

***At the close of the Second World War, a few American scientists brought up a troublesome idea. If it were true, as some claimed, that humans were inadvertently changing their local weather by cutting down forests and emitting pollution, why not try to modify the weather on purpose? For generations there had been proposals for rainmaking, based on folklore like the story that cannonades from big battles brought rain.

Now top experts began to take the question seriously…. At the end of 1945 a brilliant mathematician, John von Neumann, called other leading scientists to a meeting in Princeton, where they agreed that modifying weather deliberately might be possible. They expected that could make a great difference in the next war. Soviet harvests, for example, might be ruined by creating a drought. Some scientists suspected that alongside the race with the Soviet Union for ever more terrible nuclear weapons, they were entering an equally fateful race to control the weather. As the Cold War got underway, U.S. military agencies devoted significant funds to research on what came to be called “climatological warfare.”

***

In 1953 a President’s Advisory Committee on Weather Control was established to pursue the idea. In 1958, the U.S. Congress acted directly to fund expanded rainmaking research. Large-scale experimentation was also underway, less openly, in the Soviet Union.Military agencies in the U.S. (and presumably in the Soviet Union) supported research not only on cloud seeding but on other ways that injecting materials into the atmosphere might alter weather. Although much of this was buried in secrecy, the public learned that climatological warfare might become possible. In a 1955 Fortune magazine article, von Neumann himself explained that “Microscopic layers of colored matter spread on an icy surface, or in the atmosphere above one, could inhibit the reflection-radiation process, melt the ice, and change the local climate.” The effects could be far-reaching, even world-wide. “What power over our environment, over all nature, is implied!” he exclaimed. Von Neumann foresaw “forms of climatic warfare as yet unimagined,” perhaps more dangerous than nuclear war itself. He hoped it would force humanity to take a new, global approach to its political problems.

***

Around 1956, Soviet engineers began to speculate that they might be able to throw a dam across the Bering Strait and pump water from the Arctic Ocean into the Pacific. This would draw warm water up from the Atlantic. Their aim was to eliminate the ice pack, make the Arctic Ocean navigable, and warm up Siberia. The idea attracted some notice in the United States — presidential candidate John F. Kennedy remarked that the idea was worth exploring as a joint project with the Soviets, and the discussion continued into the 1970s.

***

Beginning around 1961, Budyko and other scientists speculated about how humanity might alter the global climate by strewing dark dust or soot across the Arctic snow and ice. The soot would lower the albedo (reflection of sunlight), and the air would get warmer. Spreading so much dust year after year would be prohibitively expensive. But according to a well-known theory, warmer air should melt some snow and sea-ice and thus expose the dark underlying soil and ocean water, which would absorb sunlight and bring on more warming. So once dust destroyed the reflective cover, it might not re-form.

***

A 1972 U.S. government rain-making operation in South Dakota was followed by a disastrous flood, and came under attack in a class-action lawsuit.

***

Already back in 1965, a Presidential advisory panel had suggested that if greenhouse effect warming by carbon dioxide gas ever became a problem, the government might take countervailing steps. The panel did not consider curbing the use of fossil fuels. They had in mind geoengineering schemes — spreading something across the ocean waters to reflect more sunlight, perhaps, or sowing particles high in the atmosphere to encourage the formation of reflective clouds. Some back-of-the-envelope arithmetic suggested such steps were feasible, and indeed could cost less than many government programs. In 1974, Budyko calculated that if global warming ever became a serious threat, we could counter it with just a few airplane flights a day in the stratosphere, burning sulfur to make aerosols that would reflect sunlight away.

For a few years in the early 1970s, new evidence and arguments led many scientists to suspect that the greatest climate risk was not warming, but cooling. A new ice age seemed to be approaching as part of the natural glacial cycle, perhaps hastened by human pollution that blocked sunlight. Technological optimists suggested ways to counter this threat too. We might spread soot from cargo aircraft to darken the Arctic snows, or even shatter the Arctic ice pack with “clean” thermonuclear explosions. [For background, see this and this.]

***

The bitter fighting among communities over cloud-seeding would be as nothing compared with conflicts over attempts to engineer global climate. Moreover, as Budyko and Western scientists alike warned, scientists could not predict the consequences of such engineering efforts. We might forestall global warming only to find we had triggered a new ice age.

Such worries revived the U.S. military’s interest in artificial climate change on a global scale. A group at the RAND corporation, a defense think tank near Los Angeles, had been working with a computer climate model that originated at the University of California, Los Angeles.

***

The RAND group had to scramble to find support elsewhere. They turned to the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense.

***

When a National Academy of Sciences panel convened in 1991 to catalog the options, the members got into a long and serious debate over whether to include the grand “geoengineering” ideas. Might hopes of a future fix just encourage people to avoid the work of restricting greenhouse gas emissions? The panel reluctantly voted to include every idea, so that preparations could start in case the climate deteriorated so badly that radical steps would be the lesser evil. Their fundamental problem was the one that had bedeviled climate science from the start — if you pushed on this intricate system, nobody could say for sure what the final consequences might be.

What About Contrails?

The Environmental Protection Agency notes in a report entitled “Aircraft Contrails Factsheet”:

Persistent contrails can last for hours while growing to several kilometers in width and 200 to 400 meters in height.

***

Figure 2. Photograph of two contrail types. The contrail extending across the image is an evolving persistent contrail. Shown just above it is a short-lived contrail. Short-lived contrails evaporate soon after being formed due to low atmospheric humidity conditions. The persistent contrail shown here was formed at a lower altitude where higher humidity was present …. (Photos: J. Holecek, NOAA Aeronomy Laboratory, Boulder, CO.)

***

Figure 3. Persistent contrails and contrails evolving and spreading into cirrus clouds. Here, the humidity of the atmosphere is high, and the contrail ice particles continue to grow by taking up water from the surrounding atmosphere. These contrails extend for large distances and may last for hours. On other days when atmospheric humidity is lower, the same aircraft passages might have left few or even no contrails. (Photo: L. Chang, Office of Atmospheric Programs, U.S. EPA.)

***

Figure 5. Satellite photograph showing an example of contrails covering central Europe on May 4, 1995. The average cover in a photograph is estimated by using a computer to recognize and measure individual contrails over geographical regions of known size. Photograph from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)-12 AVHRR satellite and processed by DLR (adapted from Mannstein et al., 1999). (Reproduced with permission of DLR.)

***

Persistent contrails are of interest to scientists because they increase the cloudiness of the atmosphere. The increase happens in two ways. First, persistent contrails are line-shaped clouds that would not have formed in the atmosphere without the passage of an aircraft. Secondly, persistent contrails often evolve and spread into extensive cirrus cloud cover that is indistinguishable from naturally occurring cloudiness (See Figure 3). At present, it is unknown how much of this more extensive cloudiness would have occurred without the passage of an aircraft. Not enough is known about how natural clouds form in the atmosphere to answer this question. Changes in cloudiness are important because clouds help control the temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere. Changes in cloudiness resulting from human activities are important because they might contribute to long-term changes in the Earth’s climate. Many other human activities also have the potential of contributing to climate change. Our climate involves important parameters such as air temperature, weather patterns, and rainfall. Changes in climate may have important impacts on natural resources and human health. Contrails’ possible climate effects are one component of aviation’s expected overall climate effect.

***

Persistent line-shaped contrails are estimated to cover, on average, about 0.1 percent of the Earth’s surface ….

It is clear that persistent jet contrails can affect weather and climate. I have no idea whether persistent jet contrails are an unintentional affect of airplanes interacting with the environment, or an intentional attempt to affect the weather.

The articles quoted in the first part of this essay provide support for the possibility that at least some of the affects might be intentional. And as a 2008 international workshop on weather modification noted:

It has been well established that successful implementation of Cloud Seeding resulting in precipitation enhancement has significant positive beneficial impact in managing the issue of global warming and climate change….

German television network RTL purportedly alleges that the German government has admitted testing persistent jet contrails for military purposes – as a high-tech form of “chaff” to disrupt enemy radar.

The EPA attributes formation of persistent jet contrails to altitude and humidity, as well as trace impurities such as sulfur contained in jet fuel. On the other hand, some claim that very high concentrations of chemicals like barium and sulfur have been found in groundwater after the incidence of persistent jet contrails increased. And see this.

But whether or not persistent jet contrails are intentionally being created to affect climate or for military purposes or are an unintentional byproduct of flying a modern airplane is beyond the scope of this essay.

In Pictures: Australia Biblical Floods – Latest updates

Source : Pakalert Press

Updates

Major cyclone activity seen for flood-hit Australia

Thu Jan 13, 2011 6:07pm EST

(Reuters) – Australia’s flood-stricken Queensland state should expect to see above-average cyclone activity through to end-March, the national weather bureau said on Friday, a forecast that threatens already flooded areas with more heavy rains.

“There is every chance we will still see above average conditions,” a Bureau of Meteorology spokesman said, saying that so far the current cyclone season had made a slow start.

Towns evacuated, major river warnings issued as floods sweep Victoria

UPDATE 8.50pm: THOUSANDS of Victorians have been forced from their homes as flood waters spread throughout towns and farms in the state’s north and north-west.

Some towns were all but abandoned as major flood alerts were called for the Glenelg, Wimmera, Loddon, Avoca and Campaspe Rivers, with minor flood warnings current for nine other waterways, including the Maribyrnong and Werribee Rivers in Melbourne’s southern and north-western suburbs.

The State Emergency Service (SES) said more than 2000 people had been evacuated throughout the state.

Evacuation warnings were issued this afternoon for the towns of Bridgewater, Carisbrook, Newbridge, Dadswell Bridge, Malmsbury and Durham Ox.

Residents had previously evacuated parts of Beaufort, Halls Gap, Great Western, Charlton and Glenorchy following the heaviest rains in years.

Most centres recorded an entire summer’s worth of rain in one night, the heaviest fall occurring at Mt William, which recorded 133mm in the 24 hours to 9am on Friday, with Stawell, Rupanyup and Ararat all recording close to 90mm.

Read more

Latest updates: Queensland floods

5.54pm
Defence Minister Stephen Smith says he was surprised at the rate at which the Brisbane River receded and hopes the cleanup will take weeks rather than months.

He said operations would soon be transitioning from a focus on search and rescue to cleaning up and recovery.

The current number of troops is more than sufficient, he said, but additions could be considered.

5.40pm
Hundreds of electricians from interstate are lining up to help Queenslanders.

National Electrical and Communications Association boss James Tinslay said more than 500 electricians from across Australia have registered to inspect the properties.

“I’m overwhelmed that so many electrical contractors have expressed an interest in travelling to Queensland to help,” Mr Tinslay said in a statement.

“We have had electrical contractors from as far away as Perth and Adelaide put up their hands to help out.”

Current legislation prevents interstate contractors from working in Queensland without a local licence.

NECA is in talks with the attorney-general and the Electrical Safety Office on suspending the regulation.

5.30pm
Coles and Woolworths say they’ve collected more than $4 million in donations from shoppers so far, while big business has also rushed to help flood-affected Queensland.

The latest running tally puts Coles donations at $2.3 million, while Woolworths is fast approaching $2 million.

The fresh food people have also pledged to match shopper donations dollar for dollar, which is likely to make it the biggest corporate donor so far, ahead of the Commonwealth Bank with its offering of $1.35 million.

5.12pm
An ultralight plane has crashed into floodwaters near Goondiwindi.

The plane crashed near Cemetery Rd, about four km east of the Queensland – New South Wales border town.

The pilot sustained no significant injuries.

5pm
One of Brisbane’s major arterial roads may be at risk of falling into the river, Lord Mayor Campbell Newman says.

Mr Newman said on Friday that Coronation Drive, which connects the CBD with the western suburbs, has been slow to reopen because of structural concerns.

He said the high river level and silt has made it difficult to inspect potential damage, but that council engineers were concerned the lanes closest to the river could fall into the water because of the unsteadiness of the river bank.

4.36pm
The number of defence personnel involved in the Queensland flood operation will double to 1200.

“This will be the biggest deployment for a natural disaster since Cyclone Tracy,” Prime Minister Julia Gillard said.

Cyclone Tracy struck Darwin at Christmas in 1984.

She said specialist defence psychologists would also be available to Queenslanders.

3.58pm
Supply routes to Queensland’s isolated regional and flood devastated regions are reopening as the water covering vital highways subsides.

Moggill Road is now open between Bellbowrie and Kenmore. The Carnarvon Highway from Injune to Rolleston is now open to vehicles with a gross vehicle mass of 5 tonne or less from approximately 65km north of Injune to the Rolleston Township.

Visit http://www.131940.qld.gov.au for the latest information.

The Bruce Highway, the primary link between Brisbane and Queensland’s major population centres, reopened at Gympie on Thursday.

The highway will open to heavy vehicles at Rockhampton from 4pm local time on Friday afternoon, meaning supermarkets across central and northern Queensland will be able to restock.

Rockhampton has been cut off to the south for two weeks, forcing retailers across the northern parts of the state to resort to airlifts to get in emergency supplies.

Emergency supplies are also being trucked to devastated communities across the Lockyer Valley and Darling Downs, often under police escort due to the poor state of roads in the area.

Woolworths spokeswoman Claire Buchanan said the company had already begun restocking stores between Brisbane and Gladstone with northern centres to follow from tonight.

However, she warned it would still take some days to restock some centres, especially in the state’s far north, and some supplies would be unavailable due to supplier issues.

“It’s going to take weeks to get back to normal levels,” she said.

She said the town of Kingaroy, north west of Brisbane, still cut off by floodwaters, was now the primary point of concern as the local store was running short on supplies.

3.50pm
St George residents affected by last week’s inundation are delaying their clean-up efforts with more floodwater on its way to the town.

Balonne Shire Mayor Donna Stewart told the Toowoomba Chronicle water was expected to peak at up to 13.2 metres early next week.

“There won’t be much cleaning up going on,” Cr Stewart said.

“People are waiting for the next peak to come.”

3.42pm
Roads in and around the Brisbane CBD are beginning to re-open today, prompting a reminder from police for drivers to exercise caution.

There have been reports of minor traffic crashes as people return to work, their homes and businesses.

“We’d like to remind motorists that road conditions are not at their best with pot holes, wash outs and slippery surfaces not to mention debris that may be across the roads,” said disaster coordinator assistant commissioner Peter Martin.

“All non-essential travel in flood affected areas should be limited.”

3.30pm
Gold Coast United’s clash against the Newcastle Jets on January 22 will be free to all, with supporters asked to make a donation to the flood relief appeal.

Tickets will be available from Ticketek, according to the Courier Mail.

Gold Coast United vice-captain Michael Thwaite said he felt privileged that the team could play a part in the relief effort.

“If we can help to put a few smiles back on people’s faces and raise some money then we will all be delighted about that.”

3.23pm
Dalby’s fuel supplies have been replenished after a convoy of supply trucks rolled into town under police escort.

Three large fuel tankers from Toowoomba delivered thousands of litres of fuel to waiting service stations, which led to the local disaster co-ordination group lifting enforced restrictions on fuel purchases.

3.18pm
More than 200 people are involved in searching the Lockyer Valley and the search will continue into next week.

Mayor Steve Jones said the town of about 300 to 400 people looked as if it had been hit by a tsunami.

“You’ve got cars up in the trees, metres off the ground, whole buildings taken off the stumps and moved in some cases almost kilometres,” he told Channel Ten.

2.43pm
One of the 15 people killed in the floods was found 80km downstream from where they were reported missing, which authorities say demonstrates the complexity of emergency operations.

Queensland Emergency Services Minister Neil Roberts made the announcement at a press conference this afternoon.

He has also issued a stern warning against looting. Under the criminal code, the penalty doubles to 10 years in a disaster situation.

2.20pm
Police are asking members of the public to stay out of the Ipswich CBD unless absolutely essential.

Emergency workers have reported heavy traffic congestion which is hampering their efforts.

2.11pm
A Bundaberg man has told of finding human ashes in the wake of the Queensland flooding.

Clayton Morris, a resident of Riverdale Caravan Park, discovered an urn containing the remains and hopes to find its owner.

“I was trying to see what I could save before the water came up again this morning,” he told the NewsMail.

“I kicked something very hard and as I went to pick it up, I saw that it was an urn of someone’s ashes.”

It is believed the ashes belonged to a male resident of the park.

“It’ll mean the world to him – that was his wife.

2.06pm
Dalby residents remain on the toughest water restrictions, after the town’s water treatment plant was flooded for the second time in three weeks and has been shut down.

The Condamine River flows from Warwick and Toowoomba, and is continuing to rise despite floodwaters receding in Dalby.

Western Downs Mayor Ray Brown advises residents that Level Six restrictions remain in force, with use limited to absolutely essential purposes with no outside use or flood clean up permitted.

“This is slightly lower than the previous flood, but will still severely impact upon the town’s water supply and Council again desperately requires residents to cut back their water use.”

He strongly urged Dalby residents to use water for essential purposes only until further notice.

“Town water definitely must not be used for flood clean up.”

Water carting will commence today to supplement the town supply.

2pm
The Wivenhoe Dam on the Brisbane River will be releasing a high volume of 3,500 cubic meters per second for the next five to six days in preparations for next Friday’s king tide, Queensland Premier Anna Bligh says.

In Goondiwindi, 62 airlifted from hospitals and nursing homes and a helicopter is pre-positioned in the area. 100 residents are in evacuation centres.

Search and rescue continues in the Lockyer Valley, with the majority of properties anticipated to be resupplied with electricity today.

1.47pm
A central Queensland man is warning others not to enter floodwaters lest they become ill like him.

Trevor Breadley told ABC he is among four people from Theodore, west of Bundaberg in southern Queensland, who have been hospitalised with flood-related infections.

“I’d like to warn people not to go in flood water unnecessarily – that’s how I got this bug,” he said.

“Doctors are fighting frantically trying to find a name on it and a cure for it – it’s some soil-borne, water-carrying infection.”

1.42pm
A Sunshine Coast animal rehabilitation centre has been inundated with babies, the Noosa News reported.

The Eumundi Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre is caring for about 300 birds, lizards, turtles, possums and joeys among the animals that have been rescued.

Gill Brownhill, who runs the rehabilitation centre, told the Noosa News many animals were ready to be released but disastrous weather had hindered those plans.

Ms Brownhill said there had been a huge inundation of baby kookaburras with about 40 brought dropped off in recent weeks.

1.30pm
Police deputy commissioner Ian Stewart says three people – two men and a woman – were arrested overnight for looting.

The trio were caught loading goods into a boat in Brisbane.

Mr Stewart said it was “very disturbing” that people were looting, but said police were proactively patrolling the state’s streets and waterways.

He reiterated that civilians should not risk their safety in floodwaters.

Protecting property from potential looters was a job for police, he said.

1.21pm
An evacuation centre has been opened at Goondiwindi and residents in low-lying areas are being advised to make their way to the showgrounds.

Bureau hydrologist Ian Rocca told the Brisbane Times water levels were at 10.64 metres and will continue to rise to a record peak level of 10.85 metres and possibly higher after noon.

Goondiwindi mayor Graeme Scheu told AAP he was confident the flood levees would hold.

But it will be a case of wait-and-see.

“The levee bank is designed for 11 metres. We are expecting this to hold but we are in uncharted territory,” Mr Scheu said.

1.15pm
A mine sweeper has been requested from the Australian Defence Force to search Morton Bay for debris that has washed down the Brisbane River, Queensland Premier Anna Bligh said.

Around 600 military personnel have been brought into the state, where they are helping to resupply isolated towns and assisting police. More personnel are to be deployed in Brisbane and Ipswich.

The Bremer River is falling – it is currently at 10.1m at Ipswich.

1.05pm
Premier Anna Bligh is urging people to wear their gumboots and be aware of hidden dangers in floodwater.

Even in ankle-deep water, broken glass and other dangerous items could cause serious injury and infection, she warned.

She said 900 people were still in evacuation centres in Ipswich. Efforts are underway to open Ipswich Motorway.

In Moggill many have been isolated and cut off from power.

The southern Queensland town of Dirranbandi, west of Goondiwindi, has been cut off by flood waters and will be isolated until next month.

The town has not yet been flooded, she said.

12.59pm
Flood waters at Condamine will peak in the weekend, the second largest flood on record.

The Queensland border town of Goondiwindi is also preparing for record flood levels that threaten to breach its levees.

Some evacuations have already began at Goondiwindi, which has a population of 6000.

In Brisbane, the River has receded to 2.5m and below. Ten buildings remain without power in the CBD. It is unlikely to be operational until next week.

12.20pm:
Queensland police have advised flood-affected residents and businesses to have a licensed gas fitter check their lines and connections.

Disconnections may have occurred for safety reasons before the floods.

And Brisbane City Council is asking people not to bring sandbags back into council depots just yet. Instead they should hold on to them for now and the council will organise facilities in the next few days.

12.15pm:
Queensland Premier Anna Bligh told ABC Radio this morning 60 schools and 86 kindergartens and childcare centres across the state have been damaged in the floods.

“We are determined to have schools open on the normal day one of the school year,” she said.

12.08pm:
Health authorities and the grocery industry have warned residents returning to their homes to bin tainted food.

The same advice applied to food that had been in a refrigerator for more than 24 hours during power cuts.

“The other thing that is important to do is to get rid of any food that has come into contact with floodwaters,” Queensland Health chief Jeanette Young told ABC Television .

“Because we don’t want people to get food poisoning after everything else.”

The Australian Food and Grocery Council provided the same advice.

“Anything that’s being flood-affected, gone under water has to be thrown out,” chief executive Kate Carnell said.

Authorities are providing skips in suburban streets to take bags of tainted food.

12.05pm:
There are still 66,000 properties without power in Brisbane and surrounding areas – power has been restored to 170,000.

Today buses are running today on a modified Sunday timetable. More than than 160 routes are running while 25 routes have been suspended. Check translink.com.au for more.

12pm:
Queensland police say additional police are being deployed to the flood-hammered Lockyer Valley town of Grantham to assist the community as people start to return home.

And Brisbane Lord Mayor Campbell Newman is appealing for owners of plant and equipment to volunteer in the clean-up of the city’s streets as the floods recede.

The job would take all day at least, Mr Newman said.

“The priority is the main arterials today.”

Work on the back streets would probably start in earnest on Saturday and Sunday.

“I’m calling on people who want to volunteer private plant and equipment,” he said.

“We’ll pay for the diesel if you’ll volunteer your time. Email me – lordmayor@brisbane.qld.gov.au – we’ll contact you, hopefully today, and we’ll try and then give you a job. We’d appreciate offers of support.”

11.54am:
Bread is proving to be as precious as gold in Marlborough, the Fraser Coast Chronicle reported this morning.

A convoy of supplies was escorted through back routes by police, on the way north to restock towns suffering shortages.

But the trucks had been stuck by the side of the road south of Gympie for days, so any perishables like fruit, vegetables and milk did not make it through.

Foodworks manager Nick Henselheit told the Fraser Coast Chronicle his store managed to get a delivery of mixed groceries including flour, toilet paper and pet food, but no bread.

“The Buttercup bread factory in Brisbane is under water, and their Burleigh factory can’t produce enough; Tip-Top still can’t get their bread through,” Mr Henselheit said.

“It could be a couple of days before we work out where it will come from.”

The bread shortage is working in favour of local bakers, however, who told the paper they are selling it straight from the oven.

“Our bread is going out the door red hot,” one baker said. “We can’t even slice it before it’s sold.”

In Gladstone, the in-demand item is milk, the Gladstone Observer reported.

A milk truck was being unloaded at the Woolworths in Goondoon Street yesterday afternoon, but as staff were loading it on the shelves, customers were taking it off again.

Customers were restricted to two bottles each.

11.39am: The Goondiwindi Regional council says businesses in the town will trade as normal today, despite flood waters creeping slowly higher this morning.

At 8am (11am NZST) the MacIntyre River was at 10.64m at Goondiwindi. The Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) has projected the river will reach 10.85m or higher later today.

Mayor Graeme Scheu told ABC Radio he was confident the 11m levee along the river, built in 1958 would hold.

“That to me was never a great problem,” he said.

The previous flood peak record at the town is 10.6m, which was reached during a 1996 flood.

“This is the greatest volume of water that has ever flown down the MacIntyre River,” Mr Scheu said this morning.

The flood level upstream at Kildonan was at 12.97m and falling at 7am (10am NZST), the BoM said, down from a peak of 13.05m last night.

11.17am: The Australia Socceroos will wear black armbands and there will be a moment of silence before their Asian Cup football clash against Korea Republic in Qatar tomorrow morning (NZST Time), in memory of those who have lost their lives in the Queensland floods.

11.03am: Wear gumboots not “thongs”. That’s the message from Queensland Premier Anna Bligh as people get stuck into the big clean up across the flood-ravaged state.

Ms Bligh told ABC Radio the residing floodwaters will leave behind an “unbelievable stench”.

“It smells like that because it has bad things in it,” she said.

The flood waters will contain everything from farm run-off to storm water and sewage.

“You need to protect yourself when you get in there for the clean up,” she said.

Meanwhile, Michael Ross of the Royal Automotive Club of Queensland told ABC Radio there is no threat to fuel supplies in Brisbane so there is no need for people to panic buy.

10.33am: Rockhampton police have charged a 26-year-old Koongal man with two charges of unregulated high risk activity and two of obstructing police after he allegedly jumped into a flooded river in Rockhampton.

Police said the man climbed onto the Fitzroy Bridge and jumped into the Fitzroy River just before midnight last night.

Water police and Queensland Fire and Rescue Service Swift Water Rescue searched the river for the man, who was later seen running away.

The man is believed to have been involved in the same activity the night before, police said.

He will appear in Rockhampton Magistrates Court today.

10.03am: The Australian Business Traveller has contacted all the major airlines flying to and from Brisbane Airport to find out the exact details of their change policy following the Queensland floods.

Most airlines are waiving their fees for changing flights. Full policies can be read here.

9.52: Australia Post is advising mail delivery into and out of flood affected regions of Queensland has been “severely impacted and subject to major delays”.

Australia Post said it would continue to transport letters to the northern regions for delivery to those areas that are still accessible, but with air freight capacity limited, essential supplies will take precedence, so mail may take longer to get through.

“With major roads to the north blocked, we are using sea to ship parcels from Sydney to Townsville for all areas from Rockhampton north and west,” the company said on its website.

Letters are reaching Rockhampton and Mackay via air, as roads to the north are expected to be restricted for at least another week. Access to Toowoomba is also restricted, but deliveries of local products within the region are continuing.

Many parts of the Grafton catchment area cannot be delivered to due to the Pacific Highway being blocked, while delivery within Brisbane will be delayed where roads are blocked.

As of yesterday, more than 70 post offices in Queensland are closed.

9.34am: The Australian Institute of Architects has started a blog to enable its members from across the country to offer assistance and support to members in flood-affected Queensland.

“You may be able to offer office space, or accommodation, electrical equipment or internet access,” the blog reads.

“You may be able to head to Queensland and help with cleaning up after the water subsides.”

9.17am: Around 40 people are now feared to have died when a wall of water smashed into the tiny Lockyer Valley community of Grantham, The Queensland Times reported this morning.

The official disaster death toll is 15, but residents of the town and police sources have told the paper they expect the number of confirmed deaths to soar in the next few days.

The number of missing across the entire Lockyer Valley stands at 61. The Australian Defence Force arrived in the town yesterday to help the search for victims of the flood.

A local woman told The Queensland Times: “There are still dozens of people that haven’t been found”.

“After experiencing first-hand the ferocity of the water that came through here … it’s unlikely they are still alive.

It’s awful to say that. They are our friends and family, but we need to face the facts.”

9.11am: As flood levels subside in Ipswich the true extent of the damage is being revealed, with the repair bill tipped to pass the A$100 million (NZ$130m) mark.

Some residents who evacuated houses on Tuesday and Wednesday were yesterday able to see their homes and businesses for the first time with the Bremer River slowly starting to recede. As of 5.42am (8.42am NZST) today, the river was at 10.6m.

Ipswich Mayor Paul Pisasale told The Queensland Times the repair and clean-up bill for the city, including roads and infrastructure, would be in excess of $100 million.

9.01am: Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has announced the State Government will provide free public transport for a week from today to help with the initial flood recovery in South East Queensland.

“Our public transport network is vital to the region’s recovery,” Ms Bligh said.

“Many people don’t have cars, and many others have lost them in the floods.

“We want to help as much as possible and making the network free for a week will keep unnecessary cars off the road, help people do some shopping and get around to help others if needed.”

Minister for Transport Rachel Nolan said the measure was intended to assist the flood recovery.

“Let me be clear. This isn’t a ticket to rubberneck. It remains the case that non-essential travel is not encouraged,” she said.

Ms Nolan said planned fare rises would still go ahead on January 22 as additional state funds would be required to rebuild the damaged transport network.

– NZ HERALD STAFF

Huge ring appears over Australia, is HAARP involved ?

Source : Pakalert Press

colin andrews

After receiving an urgent e-mail from a contact in Australia informing me of bizarre weather on the weather satellite imagery, I checked out the data and just hours later more strangeness. I am waiting to hear from the Australian Government’s weather bureau for their own explanation.

“There is very strange weather happening here – please check”

A contact in Australia just alerted me to what he describes as “very strange weather taking place over the south west of Australia”. He told me to go to the national weather satellite images if I could not open the images he attached (See left). By the time I had discovered the e-mail and checked, the large clearly defined ring had mostly dissipated but still was just visible on a time loop which was spiraling counter clockwise (Low Pressure system).

The images above is what my contact sent which shows a wide band ring covering many hundreds of miles across the south west of Australia with a small dot (presumably cloud) shown just right of center.

I saved the loop of the area when I checked the site several hours later but unfortunately it was encrypted not to permit this. The loop is not now on the site but the satellite image taken at 16:30 UTC is also very interesting. It shows a very large rotating over the western Australia where the mysterious large ring appeared from which a small but brief condense trail formed off the coastline and from the center what had been the huge ring a series of what appears to be three mini spiraling arms are seen moving out of the area, moving north east. This is one of those rare occasions when I could buy weather experimentation effects or other experiments
being performed by HAARP are being observed. It is hoped to receive an explanation from the Australian Government Weather Bureau for these series of strange effects.

Only remains of the huge ring now moving away north east as several small spiraling arms. Satellite Image by Australian Government.

Other similar circles and rings seen on radar http://www.colinandrews.net/OtherCircles.html