Now Massive Plumes Of Chaff Are Lighting Up Radar Over Maine and Florida Too - florida chaff.jpg ...

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http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone...nd-florida-too

Two days after a huge cloud of chaff lit up weather radar covering portions
Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky, as well as social media, more plumes have now
appeared over Maine and Florida. We have no official confirmation as of yet, but
the formations look very similar in composition to the one that developed in the
Midwest.

The first reports of the apparent chaff plumes in Maine began to appear on
social media around 5:30 PM EST on Dec. 12, 2018. Early on, four distinct clouds
were visible, but these had blended together into a larger blob with a peak
length of more than 100 miles by 7:45 PM. The huge cloud was moving southwest
and looked like it could easily drift into New Hampshire and beyond.

So far, there are next to no other details available for any of these new
incidents. The official Twitter account for the National Weather Service station
between Gray and Portland, Maine issued an assessment that the formations in
that area on the radar were very likely chaff, but there have been no reports as
to what type of aircraft might have been involved.

The Maine Air National Guard has just one flying unit, the 101st Air Refueling
Wing, which flies KC-135R Stratotankers and is based at Bangor Air National
Guard Base in the city of the same name, situated to the northeast of where the
plumes first developed. However, the KC-135Rs are not equipped to dispense
chaff.

As such, another type of aircraft from another state's Air National Guard, or an
active U.S. military unit, released the chaff over Maine. This was the case in
with the chaff cloud that first appeared over Illinois on Dec. 10, 2018, and
later drifted into Indiana and Kentucky. As it turned out, a West Virginia Air
National Guard C-130H Hercules airlifter flying through the area was
responsible.

In that case, the initial release was over a Military Operations Area (MOA), a
piece of airspace U.S. military aircraft can set aside for training purposes.
This appears to have been the case again in Maine, with the chaff seeming to
develop first over the Condor 1 and 2 MOAs.

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Still, it seems unusual for so many large chaff clouds to keep popping up in so
many places around the country in such a short timespan. They've all generally
been unusually persistent, too, typically lasting multiple hours, before finally
disappearing from the radar screens.

We have already reached out to the National Guard Bureau, but at the time of
writing, we have not received any additional information about this new incident
over Maine. We're reaching out to additional commands regarding the plume in
Florida, as well.






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