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. "WHAT SHOULD COLORADO BE DOING IN WEATHER MODIFICATION" at a Meeting of the Denver Chapter of the American Meteorological Society Boulder, Colorado, 9 November 1977 By Wallace E. Howell Assistant to the Chief . Division of Atmospheric Water Resources Management Bureau of Reclamation . . The Panama Canal Treaty holds a lesson for Colorado. . Compacts do not live forever: There is pre~sure for.revisions of the Colorado River Compact, and there w~ll be more. W~th the r~ver running only 13 million acre feet at Lee Ferry instead of the contemplated 15 million, revision will become ever more urgent as Upper Basin use of Colorado water increases. The Colorado River Basin is a closed interior drainage with no outlet to the sea. Though a map will show a blue line meandering from the Imperial Valley to the Gulf of California, on the ground this channel has been dry for many years and in all likelihood will remain so. There is more arable land within reach of Colorado River water than it can ever irrigate. If one single cubic meter should ever reach the sea, the pressure to develop a use of it will be irresistible. To speak of a future water surplus in the Colorado Basin is to play semantic games. There may indeed be a surplus ~ some time in the future, above the hard-and-.fast commi tments, but the waiting line for its use is already much longer than can be satisfied under any imaginable circumstance. In many cases, as that of Los Angeles, use of the "surplus" is already old in custom. In brief, water shortage is a permanent fact of life in the Colorado River Basin. The problem is the same though perhaps less acute in the other rivers that the State of Colorado fathers. Let us consider for a moment the geographical situation. The two main geographic elements are the mountain ranges and the river valleys. The mountains accumulate the snowfall during the winter and release it as meltwater in late spring and early summer. The river valleys collect the runoff and concentrate it into mainstem flows and reservoirs. In general, each mountain range feeds at least two rivers, and each river basin drains at least two mountain r8nges~ thus creating an anticongruent relationship bettveen the t'\vo elements. We have stated the purpose in terms of the Colorado River Basin, or at least its major subdivisions. We are compelled thereby to consider augmenting snowfall on all the ranges that feed the river or a major tributary. We cannot augment the snowfall on this group of ranges wit.hout affecting eeveral other rivers. If \ve seed