X Marks the VORTAC

The chemtrail/HAARP/nanoparticle/et cetera "weather control" crowd has had a festive week with many publications writing about this topic. So, let me make a few comments in the -- probably futile -- hope of providing some explanations about what people are seeing and cooling the controversy. 

The photo below shows three jet condensation trails ("contrails") crossing over a location. The contrails are mostly ice and tiny bits of jet fuel that was not completely burned. Why do they cross?

Most of the time, airliners fly jetliners fly "air routes." These are set "highways" in the sky (yes, there are maps that show them) that intersect over navigation devices known as VORTACS. That's why you see contrails crossing.

Sample air route chart. The three edged symbols are the VORTACS.

There was a comment to an article on this topic from a man born in 1963 who said, "there weren't this many contrails when I was a kid." Correct! The first Boeing 707 flight was 1958 which was delivered to Pan Am, which did not fly within the U.S.A. It took years for jets to replace propeller-driven aircraft in significant numbers. His memory is correct. 

I wrote a comment to a Daily Mail article. A lady from "Potland" questioned my qualifications.

Yes, there is cloud seeding. This primarily consists of injecting particles of silver iodide into rain or snow-producing clouds in mountain areas. In just the right conditions, it will produce rain amounts of 5 to 20% in addition to what would have fallen anyway. Note that if zero would have fallen naturally, cloud seeding won't make any difference. 

There are techniques of attempting to reduce hail damage by flying aircraft with silver iodide flares attached to the wings. The plane flies at the base of thunderstorms and the hope is the crystals will be grabbed by the updraft and there will be a much larger number of harmless small hailstones than destructive large hailstones. The results have been mixed. The most recent study I have seen says,

The findings reveal that cloud seeding reduces hailstone size in target areas but does not significantly decrease crop damage from hail or drought. Conversely, it is associated with increased flood damage to crops.

I recommend reading the whole thing. 

This is a brief summary of weather modification. "Geoengineering" -- the wildly dangerous concept of attempting to change the climate is a whole other area of endeavor.