| Show successful Success fiA cloud seeding newt Decre decrease aou 63 L NI rainfall in other areas adreq co 0 by irving P krick ph D i one of the questions we are most frequently asked has todo to do with robbing clouds ot of moisture over one area thereby materially teri ally decreasing the potential rainfall in another region articles have appeared in the law journals advocating that laws pertaining to the rights of the individual to divert water from streams should be extended to cover the rights of cintli visuals to artificially extract moisture within the atmosphere passing over his land although a possible analogy between the flow of moisture within the atmosphere aal with ina in a stream can be created considerations sh v the analogy to be almost non exist ant ait a it this is because there s actually a vast river ri ey of utmos pharic moisture in in gaseous liquid and solid form w which h ic h pass es over r a any n y area wi within t hi h c clouds copass the avem amount 0 u n t of moisture that can possibly be demov removed nd from these clouds by artificial artifice arti fic a I 1 means or r by natural means is trivial in in comparison to the total amount of moisture that exists within the cloudy air stream am although more spectacular in in creases have resulted from some of our operations cloud seeding most frequently increase es precipitation from 50 to in a region extending fifty miles or so downwind from the point of seeding in order to accomplish com even this increase every available opportunity for far 0 seeding must be utilized to the utmost thus if several hundred cloud seeding units were spread along the west coast in such a way that complete seeding was accomplished then on only ly about thirty additional inches of precipitation would fall fail along that coastal area each year even this startling increase in an nual nual would remove only a little over 1 of the total moisture flowing eastward across the coast line thus far it has been unpractical impractical to seed except in restricted alias ss for this reason there is a narrow bow band of atmosphere just aust downwind from the ahei ol 01 0 increased rainfall which may have only 99 of the moisture it would contain under tinder natural conditions from their knowledge of atmospheric turbulence scientists know that within a t matter of miles mixing with ad jacent air masses would bring this figure so close to that there would be no able decrease in potential rainfall in any area downwind ot of the locale of the seeding apra eions the seeding in anye any i way leave the atmosphere do down w li wind from the seeded area in a condition so altered that natural rainfall has any difficulty ity in 0 occurring cur ring with the proper distribution of air currents leading to the lifting of large volumes of air to the higher levels levela of t tb 49 atmosphere natural precipitation can occur anywhere eve even I 1 n over deserts there exists a type of cloud which hangs 0 ver over tau ins mountainous terrain bartic particularly ular during summer or tor for several days just after a storm the atmosphere mo sphere flows up the individual mountain slope to a level where the air is cool enough for tos to s the gae gaseous ous water held within I 1 t f tt ti condense in the form of small small cloud droplets the droplets do not have sufficient weight to fall from the cloud and conse are carried along with the air up over the mountains and down the other side on the leo lee side of the mountains they move and soon are warmed to the point where they evaporate this cloud form thus remains fixed while the air and the individual water droplets of which it is composed move through it by cloud seed ing some of this liquid water is frozen and begins a chain reaction ais drawing other moisture I 1 to each individual particle of 1 ire ipe crystal as snowflakes then fall on the mountain slopes where they are eventually melt led ed and stored as water in reser doirs |
