Cloud Seeding

Los Angeles County has resumed cloud seeding, more than a decade after the rain-making program was discontinued amid complaints that it caused devastating mudslides in the San Gabriel Mountain foothills. Since the county's $180,320 contract was signed last month with Utah-based North American Weather Consultants, the company has fired up its equipment once but the attempt produced no additional rainfall, officials said.

Next time you get snowed in at the airport, you might want to blame the planes. A new report has found that planes flying through certain kinds of clouds can seed ice crystals and create additional snowfall. Conditions that allow this seeding effect occur up to 6% of the time at six airports assessed in the study, which was published in the journal Science. The extra snowfall is associated with odd-looking gashes and gaping holes seen in certain clouds — called "hole-punch" and "canal" clouds — that are formed by airplanes flying through them.

Supervisor Pete Schabarum plans to ask the Board of Supervisors today to consider reviving cloud-seeding in Los Angeles County, more than a decade since the rainmaking program was discontinued after complaints that it caused devastating mudslides in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. "I believe it is essential that every feasible measure to increase our precious water supplies must be thoroughly examined," Schabarum said.

In the snow-hushed woods on Moscow's northern edge, scientists are decades deep into research on bending the weather to their will. They've been at it since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin paused long enough in the throes of World War II to found an observatory dedicated to tampering with climatic inconveniences. Since then, they've melted away fog, dissipated the radioactive fallout from Chernobyl and called down rains fierce enough to drown unborn locusts threatening the distant northeastern grasslands.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power announced plans Wednesday to seed clouds over the Eastern Sierra next month in hopes that it will lead to long-term snow packing that will increase the city's water supply. The DWP plans to begin seeding the clouds March 11 and continue the operation for a month, said Le Val Lund, DWP engineer for the Los Angeles Aqueduct.

Federal officials have approved plans for a major cloud-seeding experiment that will use liquid propane to help increase snow in the Sierra. "This is the first cloud-seeding project of its kind in the country that has used liquid propane to seed winter clouds to increase snowfall," said Dave Reynolds, a Bureau of Reclamation consultant. Usually, cloud-seeding programs use silver iodide or dry ice to trigger snowfall, but under the experiment, ground-based machinery is used.

A cloud-seeding flight over Yosemite National Park has upset officials and environmentalists who say it threatens the natural ecosystem and climate of the area. Last Sunday's flight by Fresno-based Atmospherics Inc. was performed under a contract with the Turlock and Modesto irrigation districts. District officials said they are attempting to increase runoff by 2% to 7%. However, Yosemite Supt.

The city will begin cloud-seeding over the Sierra Nevada this week to increase the snowpack on its eastern side, which provides 75% of the city's water supply, officials said Monday. "Despite a recent storm, the existing snowpack conditions in the eastern Sierra are still substantially below normal for this time of year," said Duane Georgeson, assistant general manager of Water and Power Department.

What's wrong with this picture? On a day when freeways disappeared under water, houses teetered on their foundations and rescuers kept a wary watch on swollen flood control channels, a cloud-seeding company was collecting $400 from Los Angeles County to stand by in case anyone needed . . . rainmakers.

Los Angeles County has resumed cloud seeding, more than a decade after the rainmaking program was discontinued amid complaints that it caused devastating mudslides in the San Gabriel foothills. In light of California's five-year drought, the Board of Supervisors has revived the program, and has required the weather modification company to take out a $10-million insurance policy.

Re "Clouding the issue of drought," June 16 Even if cloud seeding does exactly what it's supposed to do, it's still a flawed response to a larger problem. There is a finite amount of water on the planet, and all seeding does is supposedly redirect some of it, taking it away from somewhere else. This is obviously not a long-term solution as the population grows and the quantity of water remains the same. We need to learn to conserve the water we have. The county's efforts would be better spent promoting long-term conservation than trying to play God with silver iodide.

Hoping to wring water from the skies, a parched Los Angeles County plans to launch an $800,000 cloud-seeding project in the San Gabriel Mountains that officials believe will boost rainfall and raise the levels of local reservoirs. The project, which will rely on injecting clouds with silver iodide particles, has won county supervisors' backing and is slated to begin this winter.

lakin, kan. -- Water is prized in western Kansas, where aquifers are suffering and farms are miles wide and generations deep. A scant half-inch of rain can mean all the difference in a growing season. But when precipitation comes in the form of fist-size hail, it can damage or even destroy crops. That's where the Western Kansas Weather Modification Program and other cloud-seeding operations across the West come in.

Planes stationed at airfields around Thailand take to the skies almost daily, flying sorties in a campaign of national importance -- a war on the country's worst drought in seven years. They take off loaded not with bombs but with rainmaking chemicals -- prepared to specifications personally developed by King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who is commanding the operation. On the flight line in this seaside town, aviators wear uniforms with shoulder patches proudly describing their duty: "Cloud Attackers."

They still think about the rainmaker, still remember him fondly, especially when a beautiful cloud rolls by. They still talk about the rainmaker, over cups of coffee at the Home Cafe or beers at the Ryegate Bar. They can't help it -- they miss him. They wish he would return. They would give anything to see the rainmaker drive up in his dusty old truck, setting forth his grand theory of life and promising to wring a few good storms from their dried-out sky.

A starchy Quaker sewing machine salesman who billed himself as a "Moisture Accelerator" owns a unique place in Southern California history, somewhere between meteorology and jurisprudence. Before the Los Angeles and Colorado River aqueducts brought reliable water supplies to the Southland, there was the rainmaker: Charles Mallory Hatfield.

Hoping to wring water from the skies, a parched Los Angeles County plans to launch an $800,000 cloud-seeding project in the San Gabriel Mountains that officials believe will boost rainfall and raise the levels of local reservoirs. The project, which will rely on injecting clouds with silver iodide particles, has won county supervisors' backing and is slated to begin this winter.

lakin, kan. -- Water is prized in western Kansas, where aquifers are suffering and farms are miles wide and generations deep. A scant half-inch of rain can mean all the difference in a growing season. But when precipitation comes in the form of fist-size hail, it can damage or even destroy crops. That's where the Western Kansas Weather Modification Program and other cloud-seeding operations across the West come in.

A twin-engine plane on a cloud-seeding mission crashed just after takeoff Monday, killing all three people aboard. An engine on the Navy surplus plane failed after the aircraft left Stead Airport, said John Doherty, a spokesman for the University of Nevada's Desert Research Institute. The institute had contracted for the use of the plane with Advanced Aviation of Reno for a cloud-seeding mission in the Sierra Nevada south of Lake Tahoe.

Pollution, not Mother Nature, is to blame for wet weekends and sunny Mondays along the East Coast, climatologists said Wednesday. They discovered that the daily accumulation of carbon monoxide and ozone over the Eastern Seaboard is affecting regional weather, and even hurricanes' strength, as much as El Nino. Reporting in the journal Nature, Randall Cerveny and Robert Balling Jr. of Arizona State University said they found proof that weather patterns in the region follow a seven-day cycle.