Page 177 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

Commercial Cloud Seeding

While researchers were struggling for verifiable results, an uncritical, deter-
mined, and enthusiastic band of private meteorological entrepreneurs, operat-
ing primarily in the West and Midwest, had appropriated the new technology
and succeeded in placing nearly 10 percent of the land area of the country under
commercial cloud seeding. The annual cost of this plan to farmers and municipal
water districts was $3 million to $5 million. The spread of this practice generated
numerous public controversies that pitted weather control entrepreneurs and
their clients against weather bureau officials. Third parties often claimed dam-
ages purportedly caused by cloud seeding. In 1951, for example, New York City
was facing 169 claims totaling more than $2 million from Catskill communities
and citizens for flooding and other damages attributed to the activities of a pri-
vate rainmaker, Dr. Wallace E. Howell. The city had hired Howell to fill its reser-
voirs and, at least initially, claimed that Howell had succeeded. When faced with
the lawsuits, however, city officials reversed their position and commissioned a
survey to show that the seeding was ineffective. Although the plaintiffs were not
awarded damages, they did win a permanent injunction against New York City,
which terminated further cloud-seeding activities; further litigation stopped just
short of the Supreme Court. As discussed earlier, this prompted Colonel John
Stingo to comment on the incivility of it all. 75
“State Farmers Wage Fight For, Against Rain,” reported the Seattle Times on
June 14, 1952: “Cloud formations moving toward the Yakima and Wenatchee
Valleys are being bombarded daily in secret, opposing experiments financed by
wheat-growers who want rain and fruit growers who don’t. one set of attacks
is designed to punch holes in the clouds to bring rain. The other seeks to dis-
perse the clouds without rainfall.” Both “wet” and “dry” campaigns were being
waged with competing ground-based silver iodide generators. one array was
deployed by the Water Resources Corporation of Denver, which was attempt-
ing to make rain for the wheat growers; the other array, deployed by olym-
pia meteorologist Jack M. Hubbard, was run continuously to “overseed” the
clouds and ward off rain for the fruit growers—a domestic version of cloud
wars (figure 5.4).

disasters

Although cloud seeding has never been proved to cause or augment precipita-
tion directly, it has been implicated in weather-related disasters. on the night

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