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| Screen Capture of July 30 Hawaii Radar Map - The Weather Channel |
One look at yesterday's weather radar on The Weather Channel's
website (weather.com) would almost convince you that there's a lot of rain
coming down just east of the islands. But if you’ve been to any Waikiki
beaches, you know it’s been nice and sunny out there.
In fact, that's not rain. That's chaff – clouds of small, thin
pieces of aluminum used as defensive countermeasures by warships, in this case,
ships from Pacific Rim nations (and others) participating in the biennial Rim
of the Pacific Exercise (RIMPAC) currently underway off Hawaiian waters.
This year, participating nations include Australia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, France, India, Indonesia, Japan,
Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, the Republic of
Korea, the Republic of the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Thailand, Tonga, the
United Kingdom and the United States.
They do things like
practice sinking ships, torpedoing, testing new vessels, technological exercises
and other good stuff like that.
Anyway, back to the
chaff. During the exercises, they release a lot of chaff that’s designed to
confuse the enemy, who is fooled into thinking the readings are ships or
aircraft when it’s actually just a bunch of rubbish in the air.
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