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Fun fact, NOAA (operator of linked website above) has its own federal law enforcement division with guns. Among other things, they enforce the Weather Modificat

Fun fact, NOAA (operator of linked website above) has its own federal law enforcement division with guns. Among other things, they enforce the Weather Modification Reporting Act. If you try to modify the weather without permission, there is a chance that you will have to surrender to a gun-wielding federal officer wearing a NOAA patch.

Faaak 5y ago
Curious European here: what happens if you are "stronger"/more numerous than the NOAA officers ? I.e. can they rely on regular police ? Thanks
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
  That is when they call on Thor for backup. And then you are screwed. Better cooperate with the NOAA from the beginning.
  - saghm 5y ago
    And yet he gets to modify the weather all the time without repercussions! Talk about a double standard.
- themodelplumber 5y ago
  I believe they are heavy cooperators with other agencies including e.g. state and local agencies. They were only 200 strong last I checked, and that probably includes office staff.
  - ARandomerDude 5y ago
    Indeed. In fact, failure to work with other (local) law enforcement agencies was one of the reasons the FBI had such a bad day in the 1986 Miami shootout. This is taught as a textbook example of what not to do in the military and LEO communities today. They like to portray local vs federal in Hollywood as a trope, but in reality, inter-agency cooperation is (supposed to be) the norm. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FBI_Miami_shootout https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FBI_Miami_shootout
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- anigbrowl 5y ago
  You find out the hard way what HAARP can really do. For real though, if there was a real problem like that the NOAA would get military backup. The American approach to an immediately urgent problem is to just hurl massive resources at it and (maybe) ask questions later.
  - helloworld11 5y ago
    hahaha. Loved the HAARP bit. Would make for a wonderful MIB-style movie, but with NOAA agents and their secret globe-spanning weather weapons against invading aliens.
    - anigbrowl 5y ago
      One of the most annoying things about conspiracy theories is the lack of emotional payoff from a dramatic reveal. Maybe we should budget for $5 billion of non-fatal economic destruction annually, on condition that it be emotionally satisfying - build giant Tesla coils and have them bring down empty airliners, or derail trains full of extremely garish but glowing chemicals (that are environmentally harmless) in places where we wanted to build a new bridge anyway. Then we can have new conspiracy theories about how real disasters are just being passed off as cool disasters and the rotating cast of supervillains are actually a puppet show from the real villains in the federal reserve.
      - kaybe 5y ago
        I mean.. I just followed a seminar talk about methane emission detection from an aircraft in the US. For this you often fly in lines to cover an area fully. The speaker finished up with a screenshot from a youtube video where an UFO enthusiast actually followed the aircraft by car and came to the airport to look at it. It didn't help that the aircraft was rented from a company that usually rents to military. 40k views on a video that claims they released radioactive insects on that flight. (It was a spectrometer onboard...) The video is gone now, and we can only speculate what the people behind it think about that. How does one deal with this in a satisfying manner? 40k views on a video about methane emission detection would be amazing! A fraction of those 40k people in the area with knowledge of the problem and the same enthusiasm could probably easily stop all these emissions as well. (Apart from that.. if anyone wonders.. talk to us! (and please don't seem like a nutjob..) This is research paid by your taxes and on your behalf, and if you come with journalistic interest we might just open the doors and, y'know, let you have a very close look at things.)
- kuhewa 5y ago
  I'm sure the nearest FBI field office would love to show them how it's done if they asked for backup.
OldHand2018 5y ago
> If you try to modify the weather without permission I had to laugh at your wording :) I am picturing someone with a drone carrying a sack of silver iodide suddenly having a very bad day.
- jcun4128 5y ago
  dumb thought: I wonder if they ever considered blowing up typhoons non-nuclear like the bombs that starve well fires
  - SapporoChris 5y ago
    "They start forming off the coast of Africa, as they're moving across the Atlantic, we drop a bomb inside the eye of the hurricane and it disrupts it. Why can't we do that?," Trump reportedly asked aides during one hurricane briefing. https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/26/politics/nuke-hurricanes-donald-trump/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/26/politics/nuke-hurricanes-...
    - dotancohen 5y ago
      It sounds like a stupid question, but so was "Why can't we boost the first stage _back_ to CCAF then land it using legs and fuel that we carried up with us" just a few years ago. So, what is the real answer? I'm not advocating the idea, but why is it not feasible?
      - ben_w 5y ago
        1. Hurricanes are powered by heat, so you just make it stronger 2. The heat energy used by a hurricane is roughly equivalent to one Hiroshima per second, which at least reduces the impact of 1., but tells you how large the scale difference is 3. Explosions produce shockwaves which only change instantaneous pressure, and are totally ineffective at changing barometric pressure, the one thing you want to increase, because barometric pressure is the weight of all the air above the ground 4. The storm is now radioactive
sb057 5y ago
The United States has eight uniformed services: 1) Army 2) Marine Corps 3) Navy 4) Air Force 5) Space Force 6) Coast Guard 7) Public Health Service Commissioned Corps (aka the Surgeon General) 8) NOAA Commissioned Officer Corps
- themodelplumber 5y ago
  That reminds me of the fancy words about submarine captains at the beginning of Crimson Tide. https://youtu.be/0TVhxwmNIKQ https://youtu.be/0TVhxwmNIKQ Somebody ought to make a film, serious or funny I don't care...
- barbazoo 5y ago
  What about the post office?
  - themodelplumber 5y ago
    I had a neighbor who was a postal inspector. You actually got me wondering too, because he definitely carried a firearm but I never saw that guy in a uniform.
    - cafard 5y ago
      Well, the Government Printing Office has or had a police department.
      - egberts1 5y ago
        Department of Treasury, also not uniformed.
  - cbfrench 5y ago
    As it turns out, USPS doesn’t fall under the statutory definition of a uniformed service: “ (5) The term “uniformed services” means— (A) the armed forces; (B) the commissioned corps of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; and (C) the commissioned corps of the Public Health Service” (10 USC §101(a)(5)). Apparently this has to do with the fact that both NOAA and PHS commissioned officers operate according to military rules (but are not generally subject to the UCMJ), while USPS employees (even in the Postal Inspection Service) do not. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniformed_services_of_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniformed_services_of_the_Un...)
cbfrench 5y ago
Although, unfortunately, I do believe their primary mission is to enforce laws regarding fisheries: https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/about/office-law-enforcement https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/about/office-law-enforcement So, unless your weather modification activities are also violating laws or treaties regarding the use of and access to fisheries, you probably won’t be encountering any NOAA fuzz.
- themodelplumber 5y ago
  "Look, I'm only saying this once, and because you're new here. So listen up: _Everything_ affects the fisheries." --Probably a career NOAA vet
  - andreareina 5y ago
    Just like everything is securities fraud!
  - cbfrench 5y ago
    Now I really want to imagine that at NOAA OLE HQ, there is a big bulletin board with a bunch of strings and newspaper clippings that demonstrates precisely how everything somehow interacts with the fisheries. They’re just waiting for their moment to act on that. (Although they might have to borrow Amtrak’s SWAT team…)
  - oefrha 5y ago
    News: Cueball arrested by NOAA for using C-x M-c M-butterfly in Emacs to affect weather and fisheries.
  - YZF 5y ago
    Talking to a butterfly?
- julian_t 5y ago
  Oh, thanks for posting this. Coming from a country where only the military and a few police are armed, the concept of armed meteorologists was quite something. I thought this might have been in response to the Weathermen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Underground https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Underground)
Lammy 5y ago
Yeah only they're allowed to do that https://web.archive.org/web/19970429012543/http://www.au.af.mil/au/2025/volume3/chap15/vol3ch15.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/19970429012543/http://www.au.af....
- themodelplumber 5y ago
  Spoiler: 52 page PDF about military weather operations. Seems interesting if a bit of a different direction for the topic. Military ops are "allowed" but in a military context...though a NOAA buddy cop showdown against a rogue USAF weather ops team wouldn't exactly sound boring.
anigbrowl 5y ago
- Muahahaha! My freeze ray will bring earth to a standstill! BLAM! BLAM! - I guess you could say he got...blown away ⌐■_■

Faaak 5y ago

Curious European here: what happens if you are "stronger"/more numerous than the NOAA officers ? I.e. can they rely on regular police ? Thanks

RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
That is when they call on Thor for backup. And then you are screwed. Better cooperate with the NOAA from the beginning.
- saghm 5y ago
  And yet he gets to modify the weather all the time without repercussions! Talk about a double standard.
themodelplumber 5y ago
I believe they are heavy cooperators with other agencies including e.g. state and local agencies. They were only 200 strong last I checked, and that probably includes office staff.
- ARandomerDude 5y ago
  Indeed. In fact, failure to work with other (local) law enforcement agencies was one of the reasons the FBI had such a bad day in the 1986 Miami shootout. This is taught as a textbook example of what not to do in the military and LEO communities today. They like to portray local vs federal in Hollywood as a trope, but in reality, inter-agency cooperation is (supposed to be) the norm. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FBI_Miami_shootout https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FBI_Miami_shootout
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
anigbrowl 5y ago
You find out the hard way what HAARP can really do. For real though, if there was a real problem like that the NOAA would get military backup. The American approach to an immediately urgent problem is to just hurl massive resources at it and (maybe) ask questions later.
- helloworld11 5y ago
  hahaha. Loved the HAARP bit. Would make for a wonderful MIB-style movie, but with NOAA agents and their secret globe-spanning weather weapons against invading aliens.
  - anigbrowl 5y ago
    One of the most annoying things about conspiracy theories is the lack of emotional payoff from a dramatic reveal. Maybe we should budget for $5 billion of non-fatal economic destruction annually, on condition that it be emotionally satisfying - build giant Tesla coils and have them bring down empty airliners, or derail trains full of extremely garish but glowing chemicals (that are environmentally harmless) in places where we wanted to build a new bridge anyway. Then we can have new conspiracy theories about how real disasters are just being passed off as cool disasters and the rotating cast of supervillains are actually a puppet show from the real villains in the federal reserve.
    - kaybe 5y ago
      I mean.. I just followed a seminar talk about methane emission detection from an aircraft in the US. For this you often fly in lines to cover an area fully. The speaker finished up with a screenshot from a youtube video where an UFO enthusiast actually followed the aircraft by car and came to the airport to look at it. It didn't help that the aircraft was rented from a company that usually rents to military. 40k views on a video that claims they released radioactive insects on that flight. (It was a spectrometer onboard...) The video is gone now, and we can only speculate what the people behind it think about that. How does one deal with this in a satisfying manner? 40k views on a video about methane emission detection would be amazing! A fraction of those 40k people in the area with knowledge of the problem and the same enthusiasm could probably easily stop all these emissions as well. (Apart from that.. if anyone wonders.. talk to us! (and please don't seem like a nutjob..) This is research paid by your taxes and on your behalf, and if you come with journalistic interest we might just open the doors and, y'know, let you have a very close look at things.)
kuhewa 5y ago
I'm sure the nearest FBI field office would love to show them how it's done if they asked for backup.

OldHand2018 5y ago

> If you try to modify the weather without permission I had to laugh at your wording :) I am picturing someone with a drone carrying a sack of silver iodide suddenly having a very bad day.

jcun4128 5y ago
dumb thought: I wonder if they ever considered blowing up typhoons non-nuclear like the bombs that starve well fires
- SapporoChris 5y ago
  "They start forming off the coast of Africa, as they're moving across the Atlantic, we drop a bomb inside the eye of the hurricane and it disrupts it. Why can't we do that?," Trump reportedly asked aides during one hurricane briefing. https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/26/politics/nuke-hurricanes-donald-trump/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/26/politics/nuke-hurricanes-...
  - dotancohen 5y ago
    It sounds like a stupid question, but so was "Why can't we boost the first stage _back_ to CCAF then land it using legs and fuel that we carried up with us" just a few years ago. So, what is the real answer? I'm not advocating the idea, but why is it not feasible?
    - ben_w 5y ago
      1. Hurricanes are powered by heat, so you just make it stronger 2. The heat energy used by a hurricane is roughly equivalent to one Hiroshima per second, which at least reduces the impact of 1., but tells you how large the scale difference is 3. Explosions produce shockwaves which only change instantaneous pressure, and are totally ineffective at changing barometric pressure, the one thing you want to increase, because barometric pressure is the weight of all the air above the ground 4. The storm is now radioactive

sb057 5y ago

The United States has eight uniformed services: 1) Army 2) Marine Corps 3) Navy 4) Air Force 5) Space Force 6) Coast Guard 7) Public Health Service Commissioned Corps (aka the Surgeon General) 8) NOAA Commissioned Officer Corps

themodelplumber 5y ago
That reminds me of the fancy words about submarine captains at the beginning of Crimson Tide. https://youtu.be/0TVhxwmNIKQ https://youtu.be/0TVhxwmNIKQ Somebody ought to make a film, serious or funny I don't care...
barbazoo 5y ago
What about the post office?
- themodelplumber 5y ago
  I had a neighbor who was a postal inspector. You actually got me wondering too, because he definitely carried a firearm but I never saw that guy in a uniform.
  - cafard 5y ago
    Well, the Government Printing Office has or had a police department.
    - egberts1 5y ago
      Department of Treasury, also not uniformed.
- cbfrench 5y ago
  As it turns out, USPS doesn’t fall under the statutory definition of a uniformed service: “ (5) The term “uniformed services” means— (A) the armed forces; (B) the commissioned corps of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; and (C) the commissioned corps of the Public Health Service” (10 USC §101(a)(5)). Apparently this has to do with the fact that both NOAA and PHS commissioned officers operate according to military rules (but are not generally subject to the UCMJ), while USPS employees (even in the Postal Inspection Service) do not. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniformed_services_of_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniformed_services_of_the_Un...)

cbfrench 5y ago

Although, unfortunately, I do believe their primary mission is to enforce laws regarding fisheries: https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/about/office-law-enforcement https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/about/office-law-enforcement So, unless your weather modification activities are also violating laws or treaties regarding the use of and access to fisheries, you probably won’t be encountering any NOAA fuzz.

themodelplumber 5y ago
"Look, I'm only saying this once, and because you're new here. So listen up: _Everything_ affects the fisheries." --Probably a career NOAA vet
- andreareina 5y ago
  Just like everything is securities fraud!
- cbfrench 5y ago
  Now I really want to imagine that at NOAA OLE HQ, there is a big bulletin board with a bunch of strings and newspaper clippings that demonstrates precisely how everything somehow interacts with the fisheries. They’re just waiting for their moment to act on that. (Although they might have to borrow Amtrak’s SWAT team…)
- oefrha 5y ago
  News: Cueball arrested by NOAA for using C-x M-c M-butterfly in Emacs to affect weather and fisheries.
- YZF 5y ago
  Talking to a butterfly?
julian_t 5y ago
Oh, thanks for posting this. Coming from a country where only the military and a few police are armed, the concept of armed meteorologists was quite something. I thought this might have been in response to the Weathermen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Underground https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Underground)

Lammy 5y ago

Yeah only they're allowed to do that https://web.archive.org/web/19970429012543/http://www.au.af.mil/au/2025/volume3/chap15/vol3ch15.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/19970429012543/http://www.au.af....

themodelplumber 5y ago
Spoiler: 52 page PDF about military weather operations. Seems interesting if a bit of a different direction for the topic. Military ops are "allowed" but in a military context...though a NOAA buddy cop showdown against a rogue USAF weather ops team wouldn't exactly sound boring.

anigbrowl 5y ago

- Muahahaha! My freeze ray will bring earth to a standstill! BLAM! BLAM! - I guess you could say he got...blown away ⌐■_■