WMOD00274

• Title: Western Kansas Weather Modification Program 2006 - Final Report
• Prepared By: Walter E. Geiger III
• Date: 10/30/2006
• State: KS
• Weather Modification - Doc Type: Report

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I. BACKGROUND

Probably the first rain stimulation proposal reasonably based upon science was by James
P. Espy. In the April 5, 1839 issue ofthe National Gazette and Literary Register of Philadelphia,
Espy proposed building large fires to generate updrafts. He reasoned that in a humid atmosphere
cumulus clouds would eventually develop and produce rain. There are no records indicating the
scheme led to any field trials, but in the 1880's Congress appropriated $10,000 to conduct some
field experiments based on a widely-held idea that "it always rains after a battle". Afterward,
tests were performed with explosive charges carried aloft in balloons and optimistic reports
followed. However, it was in the 1930s that work done by Tor Bergeron and W. findeisen which
led to the concept that clouds may contain both supercooled water and ice crystals and, in turn,
led further to the concepts of "warm rain" and "cold rain" (See Section II).

In 1947 modern scientific cloud modification began in the G.E. Labs at Schenectady,
NY. In early laboratory and field trials, Drs. Schaefer, Langmuir and V onnegut experimented
with dry ice and silver iodide as ice nucleating agents. The ice nucleating agents for cloud
seeding have changed some with time. However, most seeding agents used today to suppress
hail are either dry ice or formulations with silver iodide as one of their components.

In 1972 the Kansas Legislature took a progressive step forward when it enacted the
Groundwater Management District Act, an act enabling interested groups to organize and
implement area water conservation programs for themselves. Western Kansas Groundwater
Management District #1 (WKGMD #1) thus became a legal entity of the State of Kansas.

As WKGMD# I supporters began identifying program goals and specific objectives, an
early objective was to organize, design and implement a perennial weather modification program
to seed convective clouds to increase rainfall to help alleviate sub-surface water losses in
Western Kansas. The decision to implement such a program came after a thorough review of
results from the Kansas Cumulus Project (KANCUP) research program and state-sponsored
seeding programs being conducted in North and South Dakota and elsewhere. Hail suppression
as an objective fit well into such a program since known results showed rainfall increased when
seeding to reduce hail.

WKGMD #1 envisioned its program covering a large area in Western Kansas, operating
during the period crops were being planted, grown and harvested. Program objectives were to:

(I) optimize areal rainfall by seeding selected clouds in the absence of severe or potentially
severe weather,

(2) decrease the occurrence of crop-damaging hail by seeding potentially severe storms,

(3) demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of projects of this type in the Western High
Plains states.