Bad news for weather agencies around the nation: there is a shit storm brewing in the minds of the most conspiracy-addled people you know, and their offices are right in the path. According to an internal memo sent by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) security office on Monday, an anti-government militia group has declared Doppler radar systems to be “weather weapons” and is threatening to attack them, CNN reported.
The group responsible for the attack warning that impacts National Weather Service (NWS) locations across the country is Veterans on Patrol, an anti-government, anti-immigration, Christian nationalist organization founded in 2015. They have apparently been encroaching upon NWS offices, both physically and virtually, in recent weeks, and the situation has gotten concerning enough for NOAA to put its network on notice. “This group is advocating for anyone and everyone to join them in conducting penetration drills on NEXRAD sites to identify weaknesses which can be used to ultimately destroy the sites,” the agency’s email said, per CNN.
NEXRAD refers to Next Generation Weather Radar, NOAA’s network of 160 high-resolution Doppler weather radars that are operated jointly by NWS, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the US Air Force. Despite the name and the newfound interest being taken by the militia group, NEXRAD is not new. It’s been in place since the 1990s, and is a key technology for predicting tornadoes and thunderstorms.
Just what Veterans On Patrol believes is going on with NEXRAD radar systems is unclear, but the group has had an obsession with weather for a while. The Substack Cops & Congress, run by independent journalist Annie Dance, reported last year that VOP leader Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer claimed Hurricane Helene, the storm that battered North Carolina as well as parts of Florida and Georgia last year, was created by a “weather weapon” and was part of the US military’s attempts to kill U.S. citizens with “directed energy weapons.” He reportedly tampered with cell towers in the area to prevent “military deployments against Mankind.”
The Washington Post reported that Meyer and his crew traveled to North Carolina after the storm supposedly to help the community rebuild, but in reality seemed to use the opportunity to gain a foothold in the community and further their anti-government agenda, threatening members of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and preventing other aid from reaching the area.
There is never a great time for essential government infrastructure to be under attack by conspiracy-pilled militia groups, but now is a particularly bad moment for it. NWS is already short-staffed thanks to cuts made by the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, including currently having at least 90 vacancies for technicians who work on radar systems. Now they are being spread even more thin as the agency takes precautions to protect itself and its employees, who will have to travel in pairs or groups when working at remote sites for their own safety, per CNN.
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