Much of the upper Great Plains has experienced severe drought conditions this summer, causing harsh impacts on farming and ranching. North Dakota has had a cloud seeding program for several decades. Airplanes spray particles of silver iodide and dry ice into clouds to cause water droplets to become ice crystals which can fall as rain and small hail.
Much like the crop duster spraying barren ground, it appears that some are questioning the success of cloud seeding. A recent published article has reported that some farmers believe that cloud seeding actually may be making drought conditions worse.* They have referenced alleged situations of clouds moving away after seeding, resulting in less rainfall in cloud seeded areas.
However, the article cites studies showing that cloud seeding does, in fact, produce more rainfall. The difficulty is that evidence one way or the other seems to be anecdotal. It simply is near impossible to objectively measure how much more rain fell as a result of cloud seeding compared with how much rain would have fallen without it. Also complicating the picture is the fact that it is hard to generalize because no two cloud systems are identical.
So, even if every cloud has a silver lining, it may not be a wet one.
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*Kolpack,"In Parched North Dakota,Cloud-
Seeding Irks Some Farmers," Rapid City
Journal, September 25, 2017, p. A3
© Daniel J. Kucera 2017
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