Controlling the Weather

This week in weather history, marks the one of the first scientific attempts, to control the weather.  During this week in the 1950’s, New York City was continuing to suffer from a severe drought.  Most of the cities water reservoirs had begun to dry up and the use of water was being strictly reserved.  Thats when New York City hired meteorologist Wallace E Howell, who had developed a process of making artificial snow, to come to New York City and make it rain (Fountain).  Wallace used a process that involved using dry ice and iodine, to create nuclei for water droplets to form, he called this process, cloud seeding(Fountain).

According to many, they felt that the process was working, multiple newspapers reported storm clouds, rain, and even a snowstorm in April (Fountain).  At the end of his contract the reservoirs for NYC were back to normal levels.  There is still great doubt, and lack of scientific evidence, wether or not the rain was truly caused by Wallace.  The idea of weather modification still exist today, but with the purpose of trying to stop severe weather, such as dumping liquid nitrogen in the ocean to starve a hurricane of warm water.  I personally feel that we should just let nature run its course.

In Other News

Punxsutawney Phil has been indicted by the county of Butler Ohio on the charge of misleading the nation into believing the spring was coming early.

 

Fountain, Henry. “Wallace E. Howell, 84, Dies; Famed Rainmaker in Drought.” The New York    Times. The New York Times, 06 July 1999. Web. 22 Mar. 2013. <http://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/06/nyregion/wallace-e-howell-84-dies-famed-rainmaker-in-drought.html>.

One thought on “Controlling the Weather

  1. Yekaterina Khapilina

    This is quite interesting information. I don’t recall ever hearing about an attempt to try and control the weather before. For now it is only and dream although I do hope they figure something out in the future because it needs to stop snowing already. It is too bad for Punxsutawney Phil because he was way off.

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