I don't think we can rule out mega-error as the source of the #ChineseSpyBalloon . Whether it was launched for "research" or "intelligence" purposes, it may never have been intended for Montana skies.
Here's my thinking (thread).
In the last week of January China --
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...from Beijing to Siberia, experienced the coldest weather ON RECORD, with temperatures hitting -63 F in the far north. The frigid Polar Vortex air moved east, hit ocean, warmer air, and soared in an atmospheric river north towards Alaska/Yukon.
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washingtonpost.com/weather/2023/0…
3/ On Jan 31 that cold front fell over #Bozeman, and wind chill temp fell to -23F. Since, it has warmed, winds calmed, & now it is 41 F.
Any gas-filled container launched into the atmosphere from China in late January would have been battered by that frigid air flow.
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4/ Rather than "shoot the balloon down," as most #Republican leaders are shouting, @SpaceForceDoD should capture it, undamaged, for close analysis, determining its purpose & intended course.
We need to know -- not blow it to indecipherable smithereens.
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5/ BTW, ever heard of Fu-Go? During WWII Japan launched more than 9300 hydrogen balloons, to the USA. Some 1,000 of them reached this continent, but there were only 285 reported incidents of sightings, landings or explosions.
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web.mst.edu/~rogersda/fore…
6/ The balloons "were released with easterly wintertime jet stream winds above 30,000 feet to float 5,000 miles across the north Pacific."
(Sound familiar, #ChineseSpyBalloon ?)
In Japan they were called "Vengeance Balloons," and they carried small incendiary devices.
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7/ The Fu-Go devices were found as far south as Nogales AZ & east as far as Detroit. Based on diatom analysis of found balloons, the objects were determined to have come from Honshu, and it was learned they were made under government orders by Japanese school kids on that island.
8/ Fu-Go rode the same winter air currents over the Pacific that, in far more extreme, northerly form, carried the Chinese "spy balloon."
So, was the #ChineseSpyBalloon launched on a Fu-Go trajectory, blown off course in icy air stream? Regardless, its purpose?
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