WMOD00058

• Contract/Permit #: #98-1
• Applicant: Western Kansas Groundwater Management
• Project Name: Western Kansas Weather Modification Program
• Date: 4/28/2001
• 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 AprilS, 1839 issue of the 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 Vonnegut 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 giant, 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# 1 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, The objective of
suppressing hail fit very well into a seeding program of this nature since the known results
indicated that rainfall also is increased as a by-product of seeding to reduce hail.

WKGMD #1 envisioned a large-area program in Western Kansas, operating while crops
were being planted, grown and harvested. Program objectives were to:

(1) 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 oftrus type in the Western
High Plains states.

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