WMOD00259

• Applicant: Western Kansas Groundwater Management
• Project Name: Western Kansas Weather Modification Program
• Date: 1/1/1999
• Weather Modification - Doc Type: Report

Ill. GENERAL OPERATIONS - PROJECT DESIGN

The WKWMP originally was designed to be an operational cloud seeding effort to
increase precipitation and reduce crop-damaging hail over participating counties in Western and
Southwestern Kansas. Although the objectives have not changed over the years, slight design
changes have been made to better accomplish its goals. The changes made were due both to
technological innovations and expansion into Northwestern Kansas and Northeastern Colorado.

Over the years we've been selective in deploying certain technological improvements due
mostly to limited annual budgets. However, beginning in 1995 major new funding sources from
both the Kansas Water Office and from GMD #3 (Garden City) allowed us to start making
significant long-term program improvements. Fig. 3 on the next page shows the current
WKWMP organizational structure and its sources of funding.

History was made in 1997 when Northwest Kansas GMD #4 (Colby) and a portion of
southeast Yuma County, Colorado were added to the WKWMP. In 1997 a new radar site was
installed in Colby extending our total program radar coverage over a second division, or target
area within the WKWMP. Our expanded target area at that time ranged from Northwest Kansas
from near the Nebraska-Kansas state line south to near the Oklahoma-Kansas state line as well as
a portion of Northeastern Colorado. More importantly, this would begin an era in which overall
seeding capability was markedly improved. In 1998 the expansion increased with the addition of
two more counties participating in 'demonstration programs' in Eastern Colorado: Kit Carson and
Cheyenne, both south of Yuma County forming a 3-area block. Eastern Colorado demonstration
areas were the first beneficiaries of any severe storms mitigation en route to Western Kansas and
it allowed the WKWMP to seed wherever it was most needed within those three counties to help
mitigate severe storms passing through them into Kansas. Unfortunately, on June 16, 1999 Kit
Carson County opted out of the program, apparently after lobbying by anti-weather modification
forces after Kit Carson Coumy sustained heavy hail damage from some devastating night storms,
mostly non-seeded, which also entered Western Kansas.

Despite adding the new areas in Northwest Kansas and Eastern Colorado, the impact on
our basic operational design has not changed over time, except that for nearly a two-month period
in 1998 hygroscopic flares were used to assist in our rainfall stimulation effort. Until then, we had
focused on generating only ice nucleating seeding agents which activated in supercooled clouds,
whereas, hygroscopic seeding allowed us to seed both warm and cold clouds...the warm clouds
being responsive to hygroscopic seeding agents, whereas, ice nucleating agents weren't. No
hygroscopic flares were used in 1999 due to a general lack of product reliability relating to the
manufacturer's lack of quality control. It was likely that not all of the manufacturer's problems
had been sorted out in their production process by the time our 1999 program was to have started
and it's likely we would have had ended up with flares occasionally exploding while burning in
place as some had done the year before. Three hygroscopic flares were burned this season, all of
which were repaired 'dud' flares from the year before.

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