Topic: Seeds In the Clouds

[oldcoastie6468]

Cloud seeding, no longer magical thinking, is poised for use this winter
By Matt Weiser
mweiser@sacbee.com

Published: Monday, Nov. 11, 2013 - 12:00 am
Last Modified: Monday, Nov. 11, 2013 - 7:22 am

As California concludes a second drought year and water managers hope eagerly to avoid a third, utilities across the state are poised for that first mass of pillowy gray clouds to drift ashore from the Pacific Ocean.

When it arrives, if conditions are right, they’ll be ready with cloud-seeding tools to squeeze out every extra snowflake, with the goal of boosting the snowpack that ultimately feeds the state’s water-storage reservoirs.

Once viewed by some as a fringe science, cloud seeding has entered the mainstream as a tool to pad the state’s crucial mountain snowpack. New technology to manage the practice, and research that points to reliable results, have cemented cloud seeding as a dependable and affordable water-supply practice.

“The message is starting to sink in that this is a cost-effective tool,” said Jeff Tilley, director of weather modification at the Desert Research Institute in Reno, which practices cloud seeding in the Lake Tahoe Basin and Eastern Sierra Nevada. “The technology is better; we understand how to do cloud seeding much better. And because we know how to do it more effectively, it’s definitely taken more seriously.”

Cloud seeding is often misunderstood as a kind of magic that conjures rain from thin air. In reality, it is simple chemistry combined with careful weather monitoring.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/11/11/5898983/cloud-seeding-no-longer-magical.html#storylink=cpy

[AlanS]

California has no problem stealing other people's water.

I really wonder what they expected building a city in the middle of the desert.

[oldcoastie6468]

California has no problem stealing other people's water.

I really wonder what they expected building a city in the middle of the desert.

Same with Phoenix. Tucson once had enough of its own water, but now they get it from the Colorado River, and it's not drinkable.

[Libertas]

California has no problem stealing other people's water.

I really wonder what they expected building a city in the middle of the desert.

Same with Phoenix. Tucson once had enough of its own water, but now they get it from the Colorado River, and it's not drinkable.

See Nevada on a map?  That funky SE border is no mistake, gerrymandered to give them access to the Colorado.  That creek can't support three states, but they all fight for it.