Heavy rains recorded in the morning of Saturday led to flooding and collapse of runoff in various parts of San Salvador and La Libertada, according to the Office of Civil Protection. It also indicates that the first evacuations have already taken place. The mayor of San Salvador said 50 houses were destroyed in the capital and 2,000 people were evacuated and placed in temporary shelters across the country. One affected area is the residential area of ​​Brisas de San Francisco, where the water level in a nearby stream has risen. The Aseluat River in the community of Nuevo Israel also showed an increase in its flow. The El Salvadorian Red Cross reported that another point where water levels reached houses is on Poniente Eighth Street and South Fourth Avenue in San Salvador. In La Libertad, in the community of El Tanque, in the municipality of Antiguo Cuscatlan, water has affected several houses. Similarly, motorists driving through the center of Santa Tecla crossed a street that is completely flooded.
The High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) was initiated as an ionospheric research program jointly funded by the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Navy, the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). It was designed and built by BAE Advanced Technologies. Its original purpose was to analyze the ionosphere and investigate the potential for developing ionospheric enhancement technology for radio communications and surveillance. As a university-owned facility, HAARP is a high-power, high-frequency transmitter used for study of the ionosphere.
The most prominent instrument at HAARP is the Ionospheric Research Instrument (IRI), a high-power radio frequency transmitter facility operating in the high frequency (HF) band. The IRI is used to temporarily excite a limited area of the ionosphere. Other instruments, such as a VHF and a UHF radar, a fluxgate magnetometer, a digisonde (an ionospheric sounding device), and an induction magnetometer, are used to study the physical processes that occur in the excited region.
Work on the HAARP facility began in 1993. The current working IRI was completed in 2007; its prime contractor was BAE Systems Advanced Technologies. As of 2008, HAARP had incurred around $250 million in tax-funded construction and operating costs. In May 2014, it was announced that the HAARP program would be permanently shut down later in the year. After discussions between the parties, ownership of the facility and its equipment was transferred to the University of Alaska Fairbanks in August 2015.
HAARP is a target of conspiracy theorists, who claim that it is capable of "weaponizing" weather. Commentators and scientists say that advocates of this theory are uninformed, as claims made fall well outside the abilities of the facility, if not the scope of natural science.