Cloud Seeding Projects in the American West

There are currently 42 cloud seeding projects across the American West,

like this one in Utah, where they take planes like this with

flares attached.

They fly right into the storm and send microscopic particles into the

cloud.

Particles that act like magnets for water droplets, bonding together

until they are heavy enough to fall to the ground as rain or snow.

At the University of Colorado, researchers are working on artificial

intelligence to deploy cloud seeding drones.

And it's not just cloud seeding from the sky. There are hundreds of those things.

That shack you see in the foreground is a ground-based cloud seeder.

The little flame coming out is sending tiny silver iodide

particles up into the sky. When a storm comes through, they go up to

2,000 feet above our head into the storm, up those mountains, and

make more snow than it naturally would.

While cloud seeding has been helping get every last drop out of some of the

driest years on record, this past winter, Mother Nature came

through. The Southern Rockies, which feed the Colorado River,

got more than

four times their average snow. But experts say it's still not

enough. As much as cloud seeding is a boost or a help, it's not

a solution. The main solution is...

Conservation.

Cloud seeding is most successful in wet years, so this was a huge

winter for them. They actually stopped early because Mother

Nature was giving up so

much. Now, studies have shown that the environmental impacts from the

silver

iodide on the current scale, there are no impacts, uh, to snow or

rain also downstream. So it doesn't impact, you know,

the other weather.

They do anticipate at least 200 more ground cloud seeders in the future,

and the federal government has committed $2.6 million to

seeding. Back to you, Gio and Eva.