to know which way the wind blows.

See those red fingers on the left of the radar? Now whose might those be?

A seeming grid-pattern of five heat signatures appear out of nothing to the west of Hurricane Rita, intensify and hold their positions, and then fade to nothing. Their appearance coincided with the storm's unexpected turn away from Houston to track north before making landfall.

This is Kent Steadman's capture:

The complete radar may be viewed here. Not that a viewing alone can tell us what we're seeing. But the question - What are we seeing? - is being asked on a number of sites and forums today, including Steadman's CyberspaceOrbit, GLP, psiwars.net and the RI discussion board.

From one comment on CyberspaceOrbit:

kent, whatever those 5 spots are, they definitely are not an artifact and they are the cause of rita turning north a few miles ahead of schedule. they seem to be directed from corpus christi. my presumption is that they are ships. we have high powered microwave weapons , ship mounted, in the 90-110 GHZ range which overlaps the radar freq. used in the animation. i worked on the first ones in 1983. contract was NSG through DOD. they heat a thin surface layer of any watery target (like raindrops-though that wasnt the original intent) they are aiming UP toward top of rita. you found a definite "something"

Nearly a year ago I asked, "If the United States military is determined to 'own the weather,' what would the test of an environmental weapons system look like?" I suppose it might look something like this. But I'm not a weatherman, and despite what the song says, maybe in such an instance it would be beneficial to be one. Because to me this appears to be anomalous and artificial, but that's all I can talk about with confidence - the impression it leaves with me - and that's neither satisfying to me nor helpful to you. I can't presume to know without being a better student of extreme weather and meteorological radar. But I'm not going to become one this afternoon, and damn it, this does look strange.

I'll welcome an education from those of you who have more than a gut feeling to go by here. Because pure speculation, as many seemingly pure things turn out to be, is virtually useless to me.
posted by Jeff at 3:08 PM