Brief by Allen Best
Climate – February 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
After a several-year drought, the ski areas, cities, and water districts of Colorado are spending more than $1 million this year to seed clouds in hopes of inducing more snow. But does it really work?
That’s what a $100,000 study being conducted this winter will attempt to answer. In the study, funded by the federal government, researchers for Colorado State University will track storms daily, comparing the predicted and actual snowfall accumulations in areas targeted for more snow with clouds seeded by silver iodide particles. These areas will be compared with control areas, where there is no seeding.
A new National Research Council study of weather modification programs takes a dim view of cloud seeding generally, but less so of winter cloud seeding. There are, says the agency, in a report issued in October, “strong suggestions of positive seeding effects in winter — cloud systems occurring over mountainous terrain.”
The report states that the most compelling evidence that cloud seeding works comes from experiments from 1960 to 1965 at the Climax Molybdenum Mine 12 miles north of Leadville. Although scientists initially over-reported the amount of extra snow that fell, later studies still came up with a “possible increase in precipitation of about 10 percent.”
