Conservative activist baselessly links Nikki Haley, HAARP and Iowa blizzard | Fact check

Hannah Hudnall, USA TODAY
·3 min read
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The claim: Nikki Haley used HAARP technology to disrupt Iowa caucus

A Jan. 12 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) questions if the weather was being controlled to affect the results of the Iowa Caucuses.

"Is the Deep State activating HAARP to disrupt the Iowa Caucus?" conservative activist Laura Loomer asks in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that is shared as a screenshot. "We all know @NikkiHaley has a lot of friends in the defense industry and Military industrial complex. She’s losing in Iowa, and now Iowa is set to get hit with a ONCE IN A DECADE blizzard as Donald Trump is set to dominate the Iowa Caucus."

The Instagram post garnered more than 1,000 likes in three days. Similar versions of the claim were shared on Instagram and Facebook.

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Our rating: False

The claim is nonsense. Experts have repeatedly told USA TODAY that the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program, also known as HAARP, can't manipulate the weather. The Arctic weather was caused by a naturally occurring atmospheric circulation pattern.

No link between HAARP and blizzard

Former President Donald Trump defeated his Republican rivals in the Iowa Caucuses on Jan. 15, with former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley finishing third behind Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. But there's no connection between those results and the weather that froze Iowa and large swaths of the U.S.

To begin with, experts said the high-frequency transmitter the program uses to conduct experiments cannot alter weather in this way.

HAARP Director Jessica Matthews previously told USA TODAY that the program “cannot create or amplify natural disasters" because it focuses on the ionosphere, where Earth’s atmosphere meets space, not the lower atmosphere, where almost all weather occurs.

"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," Matthews said. "Since there is no interaction, there is no way to control the weather."

Stephen Colucci, an earth and atmospheric sciences professor at Cornell University, told USA TODAY something similar, saying the type of polar distortion that caused the freezing temperatures is known to occur within the stratosphere or below, not in the ionosphere.

Fact check: False claim HAARP behind recent natural disasters in Turkey, Haiti, New Zealand

Anthony Broccoli, a distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Rutgers University, told USA TODAY that there's no scientific evidence that HAARP can manipulate the weather. He said the wave of cold temperatures was "associated with an atmospheric circulation pattern that displaces Arctic air into the middle latitudes."

Broccoli said this pattern is a naturally occurring process that isn't out of the ordinary.

Loomer's claim that HAARP is run by the "deep state" is also off base. Though there is government history there – the HAARP research facility used to be operated by the U.S. Air Force – it has been run by the University of Alaska Fairbanks since 2015.

There aren't any credible reports linking Haley to the research program.

USA TODAY reached out to the users who shared the post for comment but did not immediately receive responses.

AFP also debunked the claim.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Iowa blizzard not caused by HAARP, Nikki Haley | Fact check