Cloud Seeding Could Be A Huge Problem

Cloud seeding (a type of weather modification) has been taking place for 80 years and is well documented at NOAA archives. There was a law passed in 1976 requiring reporting to NOAA, but it is not regulated nor given sufficient oversight. Seeding programs do not coordinate with each other, resulting in multiple overlapping seeding programs occurring concurrently. 

1. What is "weather modification"?

Any activity performed with the intention of producing artificial changes in the composition, behavior, or dynamics of the atmosphere. See 15 Code of Federal Regulations § 908)  for what is considered weather modification. 

2.What role does NOAA play in weather modification?

Companies that intend to engage in weather modification activities within the United States are required by the Weather Modification Act of 1976 (15 Code of Federal Regulations § 908) to provide a report to the Administrator of NOAA at least 10 days prior to undertaking the activity. Those reports are filed via the email address weather.modification@noaa.gov .

What is the purpose of cloud seeding? 

Where have cloud seeding activities taken place in the last 25 years? 

What are the downstream effects of all of this activity over time? What are the immediate effects? Cumulative effects? No one knows. No one is looking into it. 

Considering the magnitude of the extremely destructive flooding and devastating loss of human life in the recent Texas Hill Country disaster, and remembering the extremely destructive flooding from Hurricane Helene in NC and TN that claimed whole towns as well as many lives, people are now demanding answers about weather modification and cloud seeding. What we have found about this does not give us assurance that all is well. 

• NOAA does not oversee this activity. 
• States do not have scientifically qualified people overseeing this activity. 
• The public is not informed. In fact, people are told cloud seeding isn't happening. 
• Private companies do not do adequate due diligence to ensure their activity does not interact with other geoengineering activity in the same area. Frequently, they overfly the same areas on the same days or one day after another. Seeding may take place for several days at a time. 
• Cumulative effects are unknown. Concurrent effects are unknown. 

While NOAA claims that, at this time, it does not perform any cloud seeding activities, it did so in the past. For example, in this 1971 paper, NOAA describes the "hurricane seeding" activities to "increase rainfall". Indeed, NOAA spearheaded one project for over 20 years to seed hurricanes with silver iodide in an effort to decrease wind speed. This was Operation Stormfury from 1962-1983. The project was ended because the results did not indicate any success at reducing windspeed. 

A search for weather modification records at NOAA is here. As of this writing, there are 1098 discrete reported weather modification events, some of which lasted for several months. Scroll to the end of the page and search for your state. For example, in Texas, there are as of this writing 44 separate reported events, mostly in the past 4 years, several in 2025 already, and lasting for several weeks or months each. 

Despite the cloud seeding, Texas has been under an extreme drought for 4 years. Has there been any study on the efficacy of these weather modification activities? 

What weather modification activities are subject to reporting to NOAA? Any activities "performed with the intention of producing artificial changes in the composition, behavior, or dynamics of the atmosphere.” 

This includes an extremely broad range of activities: 

• Seeding or dispersing of any substance into clouds or fog, to alter drop size distribution, produce ice crystals or coagulation of droplets, alter the development of hail or lightning, or influence in any way the natural development cycle of clouds or their environment;
• Using fires or heat sources to influence convective circulation or to evaporate fog;
• Modifying the solar radiation exchange of the earth or clouds, through the release of gases, dusts, liquids, or aerosols into the atmosphere;
• Modifying the characteristics of land or water surfaces by dusting or treating with powders, liquid sprays, dyes, or other materials;
• Releasing electrically charged or radioactive particles, or ions, into the atmosphere;
• Applying shock waves, sonic energy sources, or other explosive or acoustic sources to the atmosphere;
• Using aircraft propeller downwash, jet wash, or other sources of artificial wind generation;
• Using lasers or other sources of electromagnetic radiation; or
• Other activities undertaken with the intent to modify the weather or climate, including solar radiation management activities and experiments

Lasers? Shockwaves? Radioactive particles??

The people doing the weather modification must report the activities, so at least someone knows about it, right? Not really, as there is no one in NOAA overseeing it once it's reported. Shockingly there even is an exception where activities of a purely local nature that can "reasonably" be expected not to modify the weather outside of the area of operation don't have to be reported at all. 

DRI, a research company in Nevada a cloud seeding company, has done cloud seeding since the 1960sto increase snowpack in the Sierras and western mountain ranges. “I feel really passionate that we can improve water resources across the Western U.S. with these cloud-seeding programs,” said Frank McDonough, DRI’s cloud-seeding program director. “And we can run them relatively inexpensively. It’s really the only way to add precipitation to a watershed.”  

The unregulated promulgation of private cloud seeding experimentation - at the public's risk - seems like a setup for disaster. All weather modification methods and chemicals must get immediate, expert review and analysis by a wide variety of geosciences experts, both inside and outside of government, as well as science experts from the public. It's time we looked at these experiments closely and got answers about the risk we are taking on and the effects of these experiments. 

Joseph L Trahan in Texas, from X:

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Joseph L Trahan for Senate District 15

@JosephLTrahan

I'm NOT saying CLOUD SEEDING caused hill country flooding. I'm clearly and quite rightly pointing out that a 31 person committee of Abbott donors ONLY... with NO expertise in weather, meteorology, earth physics, or anything at all to do with rainfall, rivers and reservoirs... UNDER the SOLE Supervision of DADE PHELAN Has let SOMEONE order and PAY FOR MASSIVE CLOUD SEEDING ongoing for years. MORE cloud seeding in the last year than many years combined. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON? WHO IS PAYING FOR ALL THIS CLOUD SEEDING AND WHY? Cloud Seeding...we've used it in time of drought in agriculture and ranching to help get a little moisture on the ground to prevent crop and herd die off from lack of water. It is an evolving science with more than 80 years of solid agricultural practice. Why the Texas Legislature removed that oversight from the Texas Agriculture Commission with an oversight board of ranchers, farmers, reservoir analysts, meteorologists and NOAA input was a strange move in 1989. NEVER in the history of the world have we seen SO MUCH cloud seeding that the last 18 months. The flight logs of cloud seeding in the last year are astronomical. It defies logic and those that could explain aren't talking. DID IT HAVE AN EFFECT ON THE HILL COUNTRY FLOODING? We can't say for certain, but, that much cloud seeding non-stop daily over such a large expanse for weeks on end could NOT have been helpful. THAT is something we can agree upon. We have a flight logs -of 3 cloud seeding companies -that seeded vast swatches of cumulous cloud layer -spanning multiple counties on the west side of the Hill Country -for 11 and 14 days -EACH and EVERY day Rainmaker stopped its cloud seeding there on July 2nd, confirmed by flight logs West Texas Weather Modification LLC (subsidiary of Weather Modification LLC) and SOAR (Seeding Operations and Atmospheric Research) had hundreds of flights over the western range of the Texas Hill Country seeding daily all through the flash flood deluge. We know from flight logs every grid they flew, pilot, plane and manifest was silver oxide cloud seeding for more than two weeks. What we don't know is: WHO paid them to seed these clouds? WHY does TDLR (Texas Dept of Licensing & Registration) NOT have a committee NOR a single person of the 31 Greg Abbott appointees on TDLR board that has ANY weather, meteorological, ground water, flood water, reservoir, lake, river or even civil engineering experience whatsoever? TDLR is the clandestine state agency that oversees cloud seeding. Abbott appoints the 31 members, DADE PHELAN runs that "Department" for Greg Abbott like a perfect robotical errand boy. 31 Abbott donors get to say "they have an appointment from the Governor" and they have sub committees on licensing massage parlors, hair salons, so on... but, not a single damn one of all 31 of them has even a remote notion of rain, weather, crops, reservoirs, rivers, lakes, dams, or meteorology and ZERO relationship with NOAA (National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, a NASA related agency). THAT is something the legislature took away from the Texas Agriculture Commission decades ago in 1989, where it likely rightly belongs. WHO paid those 3 companies to seed daily, everywhere on the entire western range of the hill country? THAT answer will be a good start to find out what the hell is really going on.