How time can move both fast and slow has always amazed me. Take this winter, for example. Normally, the long cold months drag on with bitter temperatures and cruel winds keeping outdoor adventures to a minimum. That doesn’t seem to be a truth for this past winter. I only recall one stretch where I became a shut in. Perhaps that is why the winter months moved by so swiftly.

The only other time I recall such a delightful winter was while I was in junior high. The major drought had struck and I vividly remember riding my bike to school, in shorts, in February. With that childhood joy followed hardships for some, namely farmers. 

Back then, a major drought hammered the region. That summer the ground in my parent’s backyard had dried up to the point cracks wide enough to drop a pencil in appeared. 

I hope that is not what is in store for us again. To prevent it, from what I’ve read, cloud seeding is being done in eight states. Which eight states, I can’t seem to easily locate on the internet and my glance into this topic has just begun. What I have learned is that cloud seeding was invented by Irving Langmuir in 1946. From my very basic understanding, silver iodide is used  to transform supercooled water vapor into ice crystals. Certain temperatures are needed to achieve the seeding, but once the  conditions are ripe, particles could be added to clouds and a reaction of rain or snow should follow. The process appears to be used worldwide.  Of course, this technology was in place in the drought of the late 80s that I recall. Perhaps it wasn’t used at that time.

The negative impacts I’ve found from cloud seeding include ozone depletion, acidification of the ocean, erratic changes to rainfall patterns, rapid warming if seeding were to be stopped abruptly, airplane effects … The answer to negative effects that I found didn’t really explain how the cause of cloud seeding created the effect. So a deeper examination will need to be done in that arena.

Do you know of anyone who works in the process of cloud-seeding? If you do, please let me know, I’d love to learn more about this technology and share  the information with readers.