Scientists blame unusually warm oceans, not cloud seeding, for Texas and North Carolina floods. Yet state lawmakers seek to ban geoengineering, though no such projects exist in North Carolina.
Viral posts blaming “weather-control planes” for July’s deadly floods in Texas — and, by extension, last year’s Hurricane Helene in North Carolina — are ricocheting across social media and even Capitol Hill. But atmospheric scientists say the physics simply don’t add up.
“You might squeeze out a few hundredths of an inch of extra rain, enough to help a farmer, nowhere near enough to flood a county,” said Dr. Gary Lackmann, professor and head of atmospheric sciences at N.C. State University.
Cloud seeding, developed in the 1940s, involves releasing silver-iodide or dry-ice particles into cold clouds to jump-start precipitation. The technique is used primarily in the drought-stricken West, and any boost in rainfall is measured in sub-centimeter amounts, according to Rainmaker, a Texas firm that performs the service.
Rainmaker’s aircraft did fly a 20-minute seeding mission two days before last week’s Texas deluge, but company CEO Augustus Doricko said the target area was “well outside the flood zone,” and the effect of any seeding typically fades within an hour.
„We’re talking about, like, sub centimeter amounts of precipitation, be it in snow or rain from every event, which in aggregate is very consequential for farmers and ecosystems, but cannot come close to causing flooding unto itself“, Doricko said.
