Wyoming uses cloud seeding as an environmentally friendly way to squeeze a little more snow from clouds, boosting annual snowpack. That feeds a little more water into its reservoirs to supply both cities and agriculture.
But, if this technique is truly effective, why isn’t it being used to help fight wildfires?
With almost a million acres of land burned up in Wyoming this year by wildfire, it’s a question Wyomingites are asking from quite a few online social media street corners like Facebook and Twitter.
But, in the case of cloud seeding and wildfire, it’s really down to the science, and what cloud seeding is — or, in the case of wildfires, what it is not.
“One very important thing to know about cloud seeding is that for it to even have a chance, first of all you’d need a cloud,” Cowboy State Daily meteorologist Don Day said. “You can argue about whether cloud seeding is going to help a lot, or a little, or not at all, but it only works when it’s going to rain anyway.”
Cloud Seeding Can’t Conjure Clouds
Wyoming’s wildfires have been caused in large part by a lack of clouds to produce rain in the first place.
And that’s the primary reason why cloud seeding is ineffective when it comes to fighting wildfires. The technique might be able to squeeze incrementally more moisture from a cloud.
But it cannot conjure the rain clouds in the first place.
It only works when there is an existing cloud, one that already has some moisture in it.
