Weather Modification - Please Read

I am getting many inquiries about weather modification -- from email to Twitter (as with the item below) and I'd like to clear the air a bit. Please read my qualifications at the bottom. 

Snow Increases

There is one area in which weather modification in which mild success is documented. 

In mountainous areas during winter, silver iodide generators can put that (not harmful) chemical into low-lying clouds and increase the amount of snow 5 to 15% over what would have fallen anyway. The qualification is because if nothing would have fallen anyway, weather modification cannot do any good.

The illustration above is incorrect in that the mountains need to be in the clouds or almost in them. 

Hail Suppression

In the summer, especially in the High Plains of the U.S., and in other parts of the world, there have been efforts to suppress hail to limit crop damage with the added benefit of limiting damage to buildings, et cetera. 

For hail suppression, aircraft fly silver iodide generators under towering clouds with the hope of getting the chemical into the cloud's updraft. The goal is to get more rain to fall at the expense of the size of the hailstones. If hail falls, the hope is that it will be too small to cause much damage. 

There are those who claim success (from my era, see here) with this technique and others who claim it doesn't work. The Journal of Weather Modification appears to have gone out of business in spring, 2023. 

Those are the only areas in which weather modification can claim any success.

Storm Movement and Attempted Weakening

The U.S. government created Project Stormfury to try to weaken and/or steer hurricanes away from land. This was based on a (now shown to be incorrect) hypothesis that silver iodide placed in the eyewall of a hurricane (a dangerous activity for an aircraft!) would disrupt the natural processes and weaken the storm. This was tried with a couple of hurricanes. It didn't work and the project was cancelled in 1983. 

As to "steering" Hurricane Helene, we can't do it!! I can't even conceive a way it could be accomplished.  Yes, I know the Chinese claim they can steer storms away from Beijing it but I'm extremely confident that is false. 

We have plenty of problems in the United States -- but evil weather modification is not one of them. The post-Helene disaster response has been, at best, inept. But we do not need to bring nonsense into the issues. 

My Background Pertinent to this Issue

I have been a meteorologist since 1971. I was a member of the State of Kansas Weather Modification Board from 1977-1979. It is a topic I have followed throughout my career. I am a retired Fellow of the American Meteorological Society and a Board Certified Consulting Meteorologist. To demonstrate that I like innovation, I have more than 30 U.S. and foreign patents in the field of storm warnings, GIS/GPS, emergency management and others. I have received the highest awards in the field of storm warnings from meteorological societies. 

My politics:  I am a Reagan (small government) conservative who believes that we need a smaller, better government that should be -- to the extent possible -- dispersed from Washington. For example, Transportation should be in Chicago (America's transportation hub), Agriculture in Kansas City or Wichita, Interior in Denver, et cetera.