What the Heck??

A couple of mornings ago the local weatherperson had a radar map centered on Indiana on screen. He'd been talking about how sometimes weather radar shows what looks like precipitation but is really clutter or precip that's reabsorbed before it hits earth. Then he saw the clearly-defined line slanting up through Indiana and sort of scratched his head. Any signal that sharp didn't really look like clutter but it clearly wasn't a typical weather event.

Most likely an accidental discharge from a military aircraft.

Or the real reason is that aliens discharged the chaff to hide the arrival and departure of their spacecraft. Trump paid them to remove the evidence of Russian meddling.

Sorry about that.

West Virginia Air National Guard plane released chaff on training exercise...

http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/25451/a-west-virginia-air-guard-c-130h-was-responsible-for-massive-chaff-cloud-over-midwest

Yes, I saw that. Thanks.

Until today, I'd never heard of the War Zone.

I have yet to determine what their purpose, funding and validity in today's divisive political climate is.

It does look like a NG plane was responsible, but the part about the "dump before landing as a safety precaution" sounds like BS to me.

There may have been a malfunction or an indication of a malfunction that may have made it appear to be unable to dis-arm the system perhaps?

There were no ordinance personnel at the destination base to off-load and secure the dispensers?

Little Joey had never pushed the dispense button before and loved seeing the flares and foils spraying out?

The President ordered the deployment of the chaff to divert attention from the Mueller investigation?

The War Zone is a department in The Drive which by all accounts appears to be a motor-sports oriented on-line magazine.

http://www.thedrive.com/team

They may be owned/managed by Time, Inc. Their funding appears to be from 'eyeballs' and clicks with targeted ads to Amazon.

From their website:

"© 2018 Time Inc. All Rights Reserved.

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites."

Maybe somebody sneezed.

More than likely as a check of the vulnerability of current radar and other early warning devices in place.

Uh, weather balloon.