Page 163 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

just after Schaefer’s discovery of dry ice seeding and just before General Electric
announced it to the public, initiating a new wave of faith and hope in weather
control—and a resurgence of commercial rainmakers.

Ge tells the World

on November 13, 1946, the General Electric News Bureau announced that labo-
ratory cold box experiments had succeeded in making snowflakes and that sci-
entists would soon conduct an outdoor experiment to see if they could exercise
“some human control over snow clouds.” The New York Times headline read,
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“Scientist Creates Real Snowflakes.” November 13 was also the day that Schaefer
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conducted an airborne test by dropping 6 pounds of dry ice pellets into a cold
cloud over Mount Greylock in the nearby Berkshires, creating ice crystals and
streaks of snow along a 3-mile path. This marked the beginning of a new era of
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cloud seeding. Here is Schaefer’s account of the test flight:

At 9:30 am Curtis G. Talbot of the GE Flight Test Division at the Schenectady air-
port piloted a Fairchild cabin plane taking off from the east west runway. I was in
the plane with Curt with a camera, 6 pounds of dry ice, and plans for attempting
the first large scale test of converting a supercooled cloud to ice crystals. As we took
off of the ground, temperature was 6 C [43 F]. In the sky were long stratus clouds
o
o
isolated from each other and at an altitude of what appeared to be about 10,000 feet.
We started climbing immediately and continued for more than an hour . . .
[reaching a cloud at 14,000 feet that appeared to be supercooled, with temperature
o
o
estimated to be –18.5 C [1.3 F]. Some brilliant iridescent colors on the edges, and
the thermometer bulb beginning to show a light deposit of ice]. At 10:37 am Curt
flew into the cloud and I started the dispenser in operation. We dropped about
three pounds [of dry ice] and then swung around and headed south.
About this time I looked toward the rear and was thrilled to see long streams of
snow falling from the base of the cloud which we had just passed. I shouted to Curt
to swing around and as we did so we passed through a mass of glistening snow crys-
o
tals! We then saw a brilliant 22 halo and adjacent parhelia. . . . We made another
run through a dense portion of the unseeded cloud during which time I dispensed
about three more pounds of crushed dry ice (pellets from 5/16" down to sugar size).
This was done by opening the window and letting the suction of the passing air
remove it. We then swung west of the cloud and observed draperies of snow which
seemed to hang for 2–3,000 feet below us and noted the cloud drying up rapidly. . . .
While still in the cloud we saw the glinting crystals all over. 29

146 | PatHoloGiCal SCienCe