OH Really? Weird Weather, Huh? Hmmm

Newsday (New York)

April 17, 2002 Wednesday QUEENS EDITION

SECTION: NEWS, Pg. A07

LENGTH: 770 words

HEADLINE: Wild Blue Yonder Conspiracy

BYLINE: Ellis Henican

BODY:
"You see the white trail?" Roger Constantine was asking me yesterday.

"Coming out of the engines?"

This was at the edge of the Sheep Meadow in Central Park. The official New York City temperature is taken not far from here.

Roger was in a light-blue T-shirt and gray shorts. On his feet was a pair of rubber sandals. As a big silver jet passed overhead, he was squinting skyward and using his flattened palm to shade his eyes from the sun.

It was barely noon and hot already. Roger was pretty sure that he knew the reason why.

"You might think I'm crazy with this," said Roger, who comes from Park Slope, Brooklyn, and is not a professor or a professional meteorologist - but hey, he lives around here so he has as much right as anyone to have opinions about the weather, right?

Passionate opinions.

"They call that white thing the chemtrail," he said. "They can mix all kinds of chemicals in there, mix them in with the jet fuel. Barium salt. Aluminum oxide. All different polymers. Those chemicals come out with the exhaust. They linger in the clouds. They can easily change the weather."

I didn't say anything at that last part. But I guess I looked a little skeptical.

"This isn't science fiction," Roger assured me. "You think it's an accident, here it is April in New York City, and we're talking about 90 degrees?"

Not just talking. The Central Park thermometer hit 92 at 3:33 p.m., the highest ever in New York City for April 16, busting a record from 1896.

Before Roger and I split up, I promised him that when I got back to my office, I would check out a certain site on the Internet. He wrote down the address for me. Some loony conspiracy page, I figured. I wasn't rushing to get back.

The day was glorious. I had left my tie and my jacket at home. For the first time this year, I was wearing khakis. If a day like this is some twisted government experiment, I'm not 100 percent sure I'm opposed.

But Roger Constantine was right about one thing. The weather does seem weird these days.

Winters that hardly show up. Summers that arrive months ahead of time. Droughts in places surrounded by water. Storms that blow up in 15 minutes, then just as quickly disappear.

I know that the people from the National Weather Service say all this falls within the normal patterns. They say nothing strange is going on. Global warming, even if it is a real phenomenon, would take a very long time to be perceptible, they say. It's not the kind of thing you'd notice in a couple of years.

Still, try as they might yesterday, the government forecasters couldn't find an April 16 any hotter than yesterday. A few hours from now, they could be looking just as futilely for an April 17 hotter than today.

And I'd been around bold weather theorists before.

For years, my grandmother Hazel McGraw, who was right about most things, has been saying how the weather has gone haywire. The weather, she said, was never like that before. She didn't blame the chemtrails. She had a different explanation. But she was just as sure as Roger was.

"It was that moonwalk," she said. "Ever since those men walked on the moon, the weather hasn't been the same. They had no business being up there in the first place."

It's no weirder than chemtrails, right?

When I finally got back to the office, I sat down at the computer and called up the Internet. I typed in the address that Roger had told me about. The site wasn't quite as loony as I had expected. It was from the U.S. Air Force, actually. It was a serious, detailed government study called, "Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025."

The word "chemtrails" jumped out.

It was kind of interesting, actually. I'll have to look more closely some day it isn't so nice outside.

But I did poke around long enough to find a follow-up site from the Air Force, referring back to the "Owning the Weather" report. It sounded a little defensive.

It said: "The purpose of that paper was part of a thesis to outline a strategy for the use of a future weather modification system to achieve military objectives and it does not reflect current military policy, practice, or capability. The Air Force's policy is to observe and forecast the weather. The Air Force is focused on observing and forecasting the weather so the information can be used to support military operations. The Air Force is not conducting any weather modification experiments or programs and has no plans to do so in the future."

Got that, Roger?

Got that, grandma?

Good.

But for April, it was still pretty hot outside.