Did the sky over Florida turning purple around the time of Hurricane Milton's landfall prove that HAARP manufactured the natural disaster? No, that's not true: The university responsible for HAARP has rejected such claims before. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told Lead Stories that "no technology" can "create, destroy, modify, intensify or steer hurricanes in any way, shape or form." Scientists have written that a combination of natural factors can make the sky appear purple to human eyes.
The claim about Florida's sky appeared in a video (archived here) posted on TikTok on October 9, 2024. The video opened with a text graphic that read:
Purple skies in ft myers ahead of Militon. Very typical when large amounts of energy is being pumped into the atmosphere
Text graphics above the next clip continued:
From my HAARP highlight. But it's all a 'conspiracy' right??
'HAARP can paint designs in the sky...'
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Wed Oct 16 14:55:17 2024 UTC)
Other social media posts seen, for example here (archived here) and here (archived here) offered a longer -- and slightly better-quality -- shot of the purple sky, compared to the post that is the focus of this fact check. They didn't make claims about the purported connection between the color of the sky and HAARP, the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program.
HAARP and the weather
The video implied that the purple skies captured in its opening frame prove that the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (archived here) is somehow responsible for Hurricane Milton.
That, however, was another spin on a conspiratorial narrative about the HAARP project's ability to control weather. HAARP has been a frequent target of baseless false claims for years.
In its website's Frequently Asked Questions section (archived here), the University of Alaska Fairbanks refutes claims about HAARP's supposed weather-controlling properties:
Can HAARP Control or Manipulate the Weather?
No. Radio waves in the frequency ranges that HAARP transmits are not absorbed in either the troposphere or the stratosphere--the two levels of the atmosphere that produce Earth's weather. Since there is no interaction, there is no way to control the weather.
The HAARP system is basically a large radio transmitter. Radio waves interact with electrical charges and currents, and do not significantly interact with the troposphere .
Further, if the ionospheric storms caused by the sun itself don't affect the surface weather, there is no chance that HAARP can either. Electromagnetic interactions only occur in the near vacuum of the rarefied, but electrically charged, region of the atmosphere above about 60-80 km (a little over 45 miles), known as the ionosphere. The ionosphere is created and continuously replenished as the sun's radiation interacts with the highest levels of the Earth's atmosphere.
In response to a Lead Stories inquiry about the claim on TikTok, a spokesperson for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (archived here), which monitors and studies hurricanes, emailed a statement on October 16, 2024. It read:
Hurricanes Helene and Milton, like all hurricanes, formed on their own due to the right conditions of sea surface temperature and upper atmospheric winds. There is no technology that can either create, destroy, modify, intensify or steer hurricanes in any way, shape or form.
HAARP, a small National Science Foundation-funded ionospheric research facility in Fairbanks, Alaska, is not engaged in weather modification. The HAARP system is basically a large radio transmitter. Radio waves interact with electrical charges and currents, and do not significantly interact with the troposphere.
The science behind the purple
The UCAR Center for Science Education (archived here), associated with the National Science Foundation, elaborated on its website that molecules in the atmosphere cause sunlight, which is made up of multiple colors, to split into various wavelengths corresponding to various colors.
Around sunrise or sunset, light travels longer distances, causing a greater scattering of violet and blue light, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of metereology, Steven A. Ackerman, explained (archived here) on the university's website.
The purple color is always present in the atmosphere, but human eyes can't register it very well, added an explainer (archived here) on the website of Colorado State University.
Past purple skies before hurricanes
The runup to Hurricane Milton was not the first time the skies over Florida or elsewhere appeared purple.
In September 2019, the Weather Channel published a timelapse (archived here) capturing this phenomenon around the time of Hurricane Dorian (archived here). The video explained:
Low clouds combined with tiny particles in the atmosphere allowed the sunlight to create this phenomenon.
In October 2018, Lauren Rautenkranz, then a meteorologist (archived here) for First Coast News (the ABC and NBC affiliate in Jacksonville, Florida), posted a video explainer on X (archived here), known at the time as Twitter. She attributed the sky's color during Hurricane Michael (archived here) to entirely natural factors:
- SATURATED AIR,
- DEW POINTS (75°+),- SETTING SUN,- THICK, LOW CLOUDS.
"Purple skies aren't exclusive to hurricane-hit areas, but the storms can contribute to creating the conditions needed to create the dazzling hue," pointed out a 2020 Accuweather article (archived here) addressing the phenomenon.
Read more
In October 2024, news media published several articles about the sky turning purple over Florida, but made no mention of HAARP. Examples can be seen here (archived here) and here (archived here).
