re: Delta Moves On...Cleanup Begins

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Any of the weather experts in here believe that mankind is now able to 'influence' weather patterns? Obviously not control them but something like activate/enhance disturbances?

I read an article about a decade ago that made it seem like governments were getting close (mostly ours). This 2020 stuff along with the most active season ever (?) reminded me about that.

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ABSTRACT Rapid City, South Dakota is built along the banks of Rapid Creek, where it emerges from the eastern side of the Black Hills. In 1972 its population was approximately 60,000. On the night of June 9-10 of that year, torrential rain upstream of Rapid City caused the creek to overflow its banks and devastate adjacent areas of the city. That summer the Institute of Atmospheric Sciences (IAS) of the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (Mines) was conducting research into cloud seeding under a contract with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation), as a part of Reclamation's Project Skywater. The research project, called Cloud Catcher, was directed from a radar site located near the Rapid City Regional Airport. The project was randomized, and used a floating-target design. Each test case consisted of a cluster of convective clouds tracked by radar. As word got around that the IAS had conducted two experimental cloud seeding flights on June 9, many persons raised the possibility that the seeding might have contributed to the severity of the flood. Others disagreed, arguing that the seeding agent used on that day, which was ordinary table salt, could never have produced such a devastating storm. The controversy was fanned by inflammatory columns in the popular press. An extreme example of such writing was an article in the National Tattler of December 24, 1972, titled "Govt. weather tampering is causing world floods." Because of the threat of law suits, IAS personnel were not free to rebut such misleading statements until all legal issues were resolved, which took until 1982. The present author has written a detailed account of the controversy, which involved the appointment of a Board of Inquiry by the State of South Dakota, newspaper columns, letters to editors, administrative claims against Reclamation, and legal actions that extended to 1982. The detailed account is available on the web sites of the IAS and of the Weather Modification Association (WMA). LINK edu and LINK repository.htm. The account provides a brief description of the convective clouds which bring rain to the Black Hills in early summer, and continues with a discussion of the possible effects of seeding clouds with finely powdered sodium chloride (salt). Next comes a description of the weather situation as it developed on that day, which is reproduced here in abbreviated form. The general weather pattern on June 9 featured a ridge of high pressure aloft over the Great Plains, and an upper low off the West Coast. The Rapid City radiosonde showed a dry layer above a moist layer next to the ground. Winds were light southeasterly near the ground, veering to light southwesterly aloft. Use of a numerical cloud model showed that formation of showers was unlikely as long as the dry layer persisted. However, the 500-mb prognostic charts indicated that a small disturbance approaching from the southwest would likely moisten the air mass enough to allow the formation of showers and thunderstorms by late afternoon. As showers did develop during the afternoon, two cloud seeding flights were conducted. The first was directed at clouds to the northwest of Rapid City. The cloud-seeding aircraft, which was loaded with about 350 lb of salt, took off at 2:54 pm, and a test case was declared as soon as it reached the shower area. The crew released powdered salt on several seeding passes in updrafts below non-precipitating clouds close to the existing showers until 3:43 pm. The aircraft landed at 3:49 pm (all times MDT). The second seeding mission was directed at clouds south of Rapid City. The crew seeded non-precipitating clouds close to existing showers between 4:58 and 5:37 pm; the seeding runs began while the test case was centered about 25 miles southeast of Fairburn, and ended close to Fairburn itself. The aircraft landed at 5:53 pm.

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Any of the weather experts in here believe that mankind is now able to 'influence' weather patterns?

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