Cloud seeding in action
From the Sun's print editions:
Baltimore Sun librarian Paul McCardell provides this guest post:"Artificial snow from cloud seeding falls for the first time in nature" was the headline that ran Nov. 13, 1946. Vincent J Schaefer, a self-taught chemist and meteorologist working for General Electric who produced this effect in the lab, tested it in the natural world by flying over Greylock mountain in western Massachusetts.
He dispensed about six pounds of dry ice pellets at an altitude of 14,000 feet. Though no snow hit the ground, it did fall about 3,000 feet before evaporating.
Schaefer was hailed in a 1993 New York Times obituary as the first person to "actually do something about the weather and not just talk about it."
Cloud seeding is used around the world to limit drought and reduce hail. And artificial snow making is a common practice at ski resorts.
Whether man should try to control the weather is debatable and if this does more harm than good.
Categories: From the Sun's print edition, History
