With cloud seeding, it may rain, but it doesn’t really pour or flood — at least nothing like what drenched the United Arab Emirates and paralyzed Dubai, meteorologists said.
Cloud seeding, although decades old, is still controversial in the weather community, mostly because it has been hard to prove that it does very much. No one reports the type of flooding that on Tuesday doused the UAE, which often deploys the technology in an attempt to squeeze every drop of moisture from a sky that usually gives less than 4 or 5 inches (10 to 13 centimeters) of rain a year.
“It’s most certainly not cloud seeding,” said private meteorologist Ryan Maue, former chief scientist at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “If that occurred with cloud seeding, they’d have water all the time. You can’t create rain out of thin air per se and get 6 inches of water. That’s akin to perpetual motion technology.”
Nursery worker accused of killing a nine
Luxury shopping over extended holiday heating up
Retailers get into celebratory mood
Justin Verlander to make season debut for Astros on Friday night at Washington
Xi Focus: Xi Says Confidence 'More Valuable Than Gold' in March Toward Rejuvenation
Semiconductor industry to overcome challenges
Cloned arctic wolf makes debut in NE China's Heilongjiang
Catholic officials in Brooklyn agree to an independent oversight of clergy sex abuse allegations
Air travel surges thanks to Spring Festival and visa policies