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Cloud seeding is a fairly common practice in most of the world; the aim is to introduce a nucleus into a cloudbank around which supercooled water in the cloud can condense and form precipitation. It’s been practiced in various forms since 1946, but has always remained somewhat controversial since it is impossible to know if the seeding had any effect, or if it was going to rain anyhow.
In 1962 the US took cloud seeding to the next level by embarking upon Operation Stormfury. The idea was to effect weather’s most powerful event: the hurricane. After Bernard Vonnegut discovered the effectiveness of silver iodine in cloud seeding it was decided to try to seed a hurricane. The models of the time predicted that the eyewall of a hurricane contained large amounts of supercooled water, and that seeding the eyewall would result in the atmospheric water becoming precipitation, falling out, and thus robbing the hurricane of some of its most potent and concentrated fury, cause the rest of the hurricane to shrink inward to make up for the destabilization, and surrender some of the circular energy.
By the time the project ended in the millions of dollars and twenty years later, they’d learned a great deal about the mechanisms in hurricane that allowed for better tracking and power predictions, but the attempts to reduce them were unsuccessful. It was determined that there was not as much supercooled water in the eyewall as the initial projections, and since seeding is unproven anyhow, it was impossible to tell if it was having any effect.
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A dear friend of mine was a rocket scientist at NASA and he had filled me in on these cloud seeding/hurricane making experiments. I had thought that there was a small chance he was pulling my leg – apparently not.
Do you know if this practice is still being researched at all? By the private sector perhaps? I know my friend was talking about using weather as a weapon.
Great article, thanks.
I remember a few years ago during one particularly large hurricane off the east coast they were considering trying to seed it. Andrew, maybe, or Floyd. I don’t know how that played out, but I know it was still a consideration.
PERKY_NIHILIST said: “A dear friend of mine was a rocket scientist at NASA and he had filled me in on these cloud seeding/hurricane making experiments. I had thought that there was a small chance he was pulling my leg – apparently not.
Do you know if this practice is still being researched at all? By the private sector perhaps? I know my friend was talking about using weather as a weapon.
Great article, thanks.”
This was to reduce the intensity of the storm, not to create it. I sure hope humans never get the knowledge of how to control the weather in that way. They are too stupid not to use it dishonorably.
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Successfully done in China. Rain at night, air in morning is cleaner/less pullution. Read in The Hollywood Reporter for pre-introducing the olympics media week.
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Filoviridae #3 June 13th, 2006 1:54 pm
This was to reduce the intensity of the storm, not to create it. I sure hope humans never get the knowledge of how to control the weather in that way. They are too stupid not to use it dishonorably.///////////////////////////////////////////
Answer:
People in general are stupid – don’t loose your confidence that people are also smart to handle things. Goes both ways, not a contradiction.
The masses still don’t know a thing about Weather Modification. And why do you think that planes are still going into every Tropical storm? they are still seeding folks,whether they say they are or not!
of course it’s still being done.