Cloud Seeding with silver nitrate

[evilgeenius]

I've just read that you can seed clouds (make them rain) with silver nitrate.

I'm thinking cloud orchestration/destruction on a major scale.

I need to go to bed and bring my telescope in from outside, these damn clouds will not go :-(

[ronin]

Been done for years, problem is that it then rains and these days that usually means someone gets flooded.

If I recall the Russians seeded the clouds that blew towards them after Chenoybal (sp?). So the radiation contained in them fell elsewhere. Also heard that the Chinese did the same during their Olympics so they didn't get "rained" out. Wonder if we will do similar next year. If so the West of England had better watch out.

Did you see that programme on the weather a few days back? They said that during our "summer" that the number of days of rain is just below 50%. As in expect rain one day in two during the summer. The records they used went back about 100 years. Seems that what we are getting is simply average.

[pete_l]

Seems that what we are getting is simply average.

Yes, there are many things they don't tell you on the side of the "hobby astronomy" pack.

Among the discoveries that newcomers make the hard way are:

• It's hard to find things just by pointing a telescope in their general direction
  
• magnification is very overrated
  
• most nights are cloudy
  
• you will never see anything like the pictures on the web
  
• everything you want to do needs equipment that is just a little better than what you have
  

[Davie]

• It's hard to find things just by pointing a telescope in their general direction
  
• magnification is very overrated
  
• most nights are cloudy
  
• you will never see anything like the pictures on the web
  
• everything you want to do needs equipment that is just a little better than what you have
  

never a truer word said

[ollypenrice]

They do it round here. I live in the Dept of the Hautes Alpes where fruit growers get grants for hail netting to protect the crops. (It occasionally hails like crazy in high summer.) Just a few hundred metres away is the Dept of the Drome, which is generally hotter and less 'weather prone' than the main Hautes Alpes and they don't give grants for netting. Instead they have one of these cloud seeder cannons on a lorry. On the only occasion I've heard of its deployment here it arrived too late and a whole apricot crop was lost.

It does sound like science fiction, I know.

Olly

[SiriusB]

They do it round here....

It does sound like science fiction, I know.

Olly

It sounds like Sci Fi to me too, but apparently there was a 1970's UN treaty on weather control banning it's use for "hostile" purposes.

UN 1976 Weather Weapon Treaty