it is an interesting thought that there’s an obscure and unexpected atmospheric event that could potential destroy planes in the air and we’ve simply never observed it well enough - the same happened with freak waves, no one thought they were possible and just old sailors being dumb but when they started putting sensors on oil rigs they showed up on the data and people investigated and understood them.

personally i think the most likely cause of the tictac is a test of a ship based high-energy beam anti-missile system but unknown atmospheric affects is definitely a possibility.