Strange 'S'-shaped radar phenomenon appears off WA coast

reply to post by Phage


Do you have some inside information regarding the Bureau's opinion on this?
I have been looking for any follow up info and and interested to hear the defence dep explanation as requested by abc

reply to post by 12voltz

Nope. Just going off of the few words in the article.
Purely my own impression.

From our own OZWeatherman who works in WA in the weather bureau.
"It's chaff from a fighter jet exercise."

reply to post by Phage


I was making an inference based on the fact that they don't say at any point that it's an artifact/glitch/interference. They don't even suggest, or entertain the possibility. Instead they state that it is 'not clouds', which - in connection with their silence on artifacts - suggests they believe it has a physical cause.

I agree that they don't seem all that interested, but considering they deal with these images and the related interference (digital and/or physical) I would expect them to mention this first if they were considering it a possibility (let alone a likelyhood)

reply to post by TheStev

In cases like this I tend to rely more on what people do say rather than what they don't. But maybe that's just me.

He didn't say it wasn't a dragon. Did he?

SirDrinksalot

Now now, these Aboriginals apparently existed thousands of years but they never managed to build a house....

You know, I'm willing to bet dollars against donuts that you've never built a house, either, which makes your post hilarious to me. I would pay perfectly good money to see you set out in the outback, a couple of hundred miles from the nearest thing to nowhere, with a stick and an unbroken liquor bottle, just to see how far you could make it. Aborigines would consider that kit luxury, and would thrive on it - you, not so much.

One thing an aboriginal - an Aboriginal from nearly any "backwards" culture on Earth - can do is take care of themselves. I mean literally - without help, without having someone else take care of them. You? Not so much. "Civilization" has destroyed that ability in you. If you got far enough away from civilization that it was unable to take care of you and babysit you, you'd starve to death like an abandoned child. The aborigine - not so much.

They didn't even progress intelligently from the day we know of their existence to the day they got in our way. They still lived in caves and drew # pictures on the walls...in about one sixteenth (1/16) of the time we know of aboriginal existence, the west (Europe) went from being fish to the Victorian era of Industry, exploration, law and order, education, navigation and numerous other things.

Is that the same Europe that was inhabited entirely by backwards barbaric savages while civilization flourished elsewhere? That Europe? The same one that had to get all of it's knowledge of everything from other people, being entirely unoriginal itself?

Stupid is as stupid does and Africa and Aboriginals are examples of this.

Aye, stupid IS as stupid does. Or posts. I'm guessing that the things you mention are not the only examples - or even the best ones. I can think, right off the top of my head, of one other.

21]post by Phage[/url]


I genuinely used to look forward to your input on these sorts of threads Phage but these days I seem to just see snarky cynicism. Perhaps you could try posting without the attitude sometime?

It's tempting to reply in kind, but I'll stifle it. Yes, it is always better to use what is said as evidence than what is not said. Based on that, all we know is it's "not clouds" I'm not happy to accept "not clouds" as the explanation, so I am digging a little further.

Your last line about dragons is unfair. I'm suggesting it's not an artifact because the experts don't say it is. They don't say it's a dragon, so to follow that logic I would also believe it is not a dragon.

Are you willing to offer a suggestion for why they wouldn't outright state ’artifact' if they believed the cause was digital? Or is it so irrelevant to you that you won't even consider it?

reply to post by TheStev

Your last line about dragons is unfair.

I'm sorry.
It was meant as a joke. There have been a few in this thread.

Are you willing to offer a suggestion for why they wouldn't outright state ’artifact' if they believed the cause was digital? Or is it so irrelevant to you that you won't even consider it?

Because without being sure, it's better to say nothing in an official capacity. The only thing he was sure of at the time is that it wasn't a cloud. Had he had a chance to do any investigation or did some just call and say "Hey, what the heck is this thing?"

I don't know what it was. But we've seen so many variations of radar artifacts that it's not unreasonable to think that's what this was. Since I'm not saying it in any official capacity, I can.

I live in WA thats crazy! We always say nothing ever happens here.. Thats really strange but got too keep in mind that military exercises do happen off our coast maybe its something to do with that? I know we have had booms due to exercises out on the ocean so maybe..

CaptainBeno
The radar detects phenomena in the sky, so not in the sea chaps.

Actually, you can detect oceanic surface returns at different times of the day or with the right atmospheric conditions.

If you've ever looked down a paved road in the daytime and seen a silvery shimmering in the distance, it's sort of the same effect. The radar's path can be bent downwards by temperature layering so that it's picking up returns from the ocean surface instead of the air. That happens a lot. You generally get a 'donut' around the station with a NEXRAD type radar such as this, but if the layering occurs over the ocean you can get odd looking returns in only one direction.

Also, there are weather conditions that will give you weird looking returns from ground level birds, insects or spray. If there was some sort of wind condition that would throw up sea spray you can see it sometimes.

I'm thinking it was a chaff drop.

reply to post by Bedlam

I'm thinking it was a chaff drop.

The thought crossed my mind but it covers a broad area and remains awfully "tight".
I wonder how many scan cycles it showed up on.

I'm having trouble picturing birds, sea spray, radar chaff, or even electronic radar counter-measures assembling themselves into such a tight, well defined shape. Is there any information on hand to suggest that there was a radar-affecting temperature inversion in the area concerned?

well, i think it's obvious what this is...

There's something rather unusual looking on the current images from the BOM Serpentine weather radar. It looks like a narrow whitish loop, with two long tails. It's formed by a line from the North bending back around on itself, and then proceeding Southward again. View it at the link, below.
210.8.186.60...

reply to post by Ross 54

Now that looks like chaff.
I think that may be a clue.

Phage
reply to post by Bedlam

 

I'm thinking it was a chaff drop.

The thought crossed my mind but it covers a broad area and remains awfully "tight".
I wonder how many scan cycles it showed up on.

I've only seen the one still shot. It would be nice to watch the thing appear and disperse.

You could do it with more than one airplane. And the new thing is disappearing chaff, which gives you a nice tight pattern on radar and doesn't leave a smeary chaff-tail due to wind dispersion. We've been dropping it all over the US in tests over the last year. If the Australian weather radars have the ability to do dual-pol scans they can spot if it's chaff or not.

The fact that they aren't commenting much and it's off the coast of western Australia (we've got a metric crapton of US radar and radio installations there, thanks, guys) sort of bolsters my suspicion that it's a chaff test.

reply to post by Bedlam

I've only seen the one still shot. It would be nice to watch the thing appear and disperse.

See above...quick before it cycles out.
Looks like chaff settling below the scan angle.

can anyone explain what 'chaff' is?

reply to post by taoistguy

Radar countermeasures. The purpose is to fool radar guided anti-aircraft missiles.
It's stuff that reflects radar, sort of like a squid squirting ink.
It looks like there may be some training flights going on out there.

reply to post by Phage


i see. thanks.