How an 80-year-old technology is being used to mitigate droughts and increase water supplies across the country.
Three weeks have passed since a massive rainstorm triggered catastrophic floods across the Texas Hill Country, killing at least 135 men, women, and children.
Amid the rescue and recovery efforts, some blamed the deadly floods on cloud seeding company Rainmaker Technology Corporation and its CEO Augustus Doricko, who received death threats after his company’s cloud seeding operation 130 miles from the flood area on July 2 caught the attention of the public.
Cloud seeding is the act of making existing cumulus clouds rain over a particular area that would not have done so otherwise. It doesn’t add moisture to the atmosphere.
Doricko’s company conducted scheduled cloud seeding operations in Karnes County, southeast of where the storm hit, and both he and state authorities have explained that those activities had no effect on the flood.
However, persistent voices, along with the occurrence of other catastrophic flooding events in North Carolina and New Mexico, continue to push cloud seeding and weather modification methods into the spotlight.
“The floods in Texas are a tragedy … More than anything, we ought to be concerned with taking care of them [the victims],” Doricko told The Epoch Times. “But insofar as people who did think we were responsible, or did have questions about our operations, I’ve welcomed the chance to educate people.”
What Is Cloud Seeding?
Cloud seeding does not create clouds. Rather, it involves flying a plane or a drone into naturally forming clouds and releasing small amounts of silver iodide and table salt inside them.
Those added particles pull the water vapor out of the clouds, resulting in forced precipitation—either rain or snow.
“Silver iodide is a favored seeding agent because its crystalline structure is nearly identical to the natural ice crystal,” the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation (TDLR) states on its website. “When placed in the upper portion of the growing convective cloud rich with supercooled droplets, the silver iodide crystal can grow rapidly by tapping that vast field of available moisture.
“In a matter of moments, the ice crystal is transformed into a large raindrop which is heavy enough to fall through the cloud mass as a rain shaft,” the department added.
Under state law, the TDLR is responsible for regulating the use of cloud seeding through a licensing and permitting procedure, and is also charged with promoting its development and demonstration through research.
By T.J. Muscaro
