The Perils of Weather Modification

Record-breaking snowstorms in the midst of a lingering drought. North China has been hit hard by heavy snow in the last week, paralyzing travel by air and land, collapsing buildings, leaving scores of people dead. The massive blizzard coincided with aggressive cloud-seeding conducted by the Chinese government in an attempt to end a decade-long drought.

Weather Headlines

Weather modification backfires in China?

History of weather-tinkering in the USA

October weather to hang on most of this week (today & tomorrow the 2 nicest days in sight).

Best chance of light rain: Thursday, again Saturday

Turning colder by Thanksgiving: cold enough for a little wet snow NEXT Thursday & Friday?

A recent spate of record blizzards across northern China has created an uproar. Nearly 50 people have been killed during the heaviest snows in five decades across northern China's drought-stricken northern regions. Damage is estimated at more than $650 million; highways have been clogged, thousands stranded at area airports, with numerous reports of collapsed roofs north of Beijing. What makes the storm so controversial? Days before the Beijing Weather Modification Office conducted widespread cloud-seeding operations, boasting that "they had produced 16 million metric tons of additional snow." In a Wall Street Journal article a weather official, Zhang Qiang, was quoted as saying, "We won't miss any opportunity for artificial precipitation since Beijing is suffering from the lingering drought." Ouch. The timing is curious, but the truth of the matter: there is NO way seeding a few clouds could have created the record snowfalls (1-3 feet) measured over normally-arid northern China. It was an unfortunately-timed coincidence, but it points out the moral hazard of tinkering with Mother Nature.

During the 1970s, during a severe drought, efforts were made to seed clouds over North Dakota to try and squeeze a little rain out of a dry, dusty, summer sky. What happened next was also (probably) another example of crazy-coincidence: it POURED over the Red River Valley, and subsequent floods got farmers so angry that they petitioned to stop weather modification immediately. You could argue the cloud-seeding worked too well! Since then there has been no weather modification (to my knowledge) anywhere east of the Rockies. Many western states routinely operate weather modification exercises, attempting to nudge the weather in a certain direction. Cloud-seeding over the Sierra Nevada mountains of California have been shown to spike snowfall by 3-5%, but only when conditions aloft are ripe. Salt Lake City's airport has dropped dry ice into ice fogs, hoping to dissipate ice crystals and clear runways, with some level of success. But the energy necessary to create widespread, heavy rain (or snow) is something that just isn't in the realm of reality anytime soon.


In recent years the one area of weather modification that has gotten the most attention revolves around hurricanes. Although it's probably impossible to nudge a hurricane in any specific direction - the notion of weakening a hurricane is very possible, at least in theory. Since hurricanes thrive on warm ocean water, if you could somehow cool water temperatures in the path of a hurricane, you MIGHT be able to knock down wind speeds (and subsequent storm surges and damage). Scientists have devised amazing technologies for bringing cool water deep in the ocean to the surface; even Microsoft's Bill Gates got in on the action by filing a patent for a process that might weaken hurricanes by cooling the water in their path.

Project Stormfury. In the 1960s attempts were made to weaken a handful of hurricanes approaching the U.S. coast. The theory: by seeding the outer eyewall it might be possible to strengthen the thunderstorms farther away from the center of the storm, widening the eye, and subsequently weakening the strongest winds in the process. Although some of the initial results were promising, nearby nations complained that the USA was "stealing their rain", so the experiments were halted.

But tinkering with the weather is fraught with peril, technological and political. During the 1960s, during Project Stormfury", researchers attempted to seed the inner eyewall of Hurricane Debby, off the coast of Florida, with silver iodide, hoping to weaken the raging donut of towering thunderheads. Sure enough wind speeds dropped by 30% immediately after the Hurricane Hunter aircraft seeded the core of the storm. But after getting wind of the experiment, countries like Cuba and Mexico complained to the United Nations that America was "robbing them of their life-giving storms." Bowing to international political pressure the hurricane researchers halted their flights into hurricanes, and there hasn't been any attempted modification since. Sometimes I'm asked, "Paul, couldn't you just detonate a nuclear weapon in the eye of a hurricane?" Hmm. Hurricanes get their strength from warm ocean water. Let's heat the water to a million degrees F. in a few milliseconds! Truth: such tinkering could make a hurricane even more fearsome, not to mention what would happen to radioactive fallout. Similar suggestions have been made for tornadoes. "Just launch rockets into the funnels to disrupt the violent vortexes!" Great idea, Einstein. But what happens if your artillery shell MISSES and you hit a nearby neighborhood.

Rest assured - weather modification (on a large and devastating scale) is still the stuff of science fiction, not reality. And no, I haven't seen any credible evidence that the Russians (or anyone else) are using low-grade radio frequency waves or any other esoteric methods to disrupt the weather patterns over North America. Again, the energy required to really have a widespread impact on a storm 1,500 miles wide boggles the mind, and is outside the realm of reality. At least in our lifetime.

I hope you were able to sneak outside yesterday and play in the sun. Does rake leaving qualify as "playing"? I took my '85 convertible out for a spin. I can't remember the last time I was able to do this in mid November. No complaints here. I consider this payback for an especially rotten October. The mercury topped out at 48, well above our average high of 37 for Nov. 15. No snow (yet) in November - we should have seen about 3-4" by now. A fairly quiet week is on tap, today and Tuesday probably the nicest days in sight with highs near 50 over parts of central and southern Minnesota. A Colorado storm will strengthen over Tulsa, Oklahoma tomorrow, then push almost due north, spreading a few light showers into town by Wednesday night and Thursday, but rainfall amounts don't look impressive. Looking farther ahead a little rain or drizzle may fall Saturday, followed by sunnier, drier weather on Sunday as temperatures cool a few degrees. Nothing remotely resembling a "cold front" is in sight this week, temperatures consistently 5-15 degrees above average for this time of year. The Weather Honeymoon continues.

Now, about Thanksgiving. Although I don't see any monstrous, flight-mangling, highway-battering snow/ice/rain storms between now and Thanksgiving, the long LONG range computer models are strongly hinting at a cool-down right around Thanksgiving, even suggesting a slushy inch or so of snow on Thanksgiving and "Black Friday", the shopping (mess) the day after we all consume far too much turkey and stuffing. But winds are forecast to be blowing from the north/northwest, so I can't get too excited (or concerned) just yet. Our flow aloft will be "modified Pacific" through much of next week, so expect our run of October-ish weather to hang on for the better part of the next 10 days. I can live with that....

Paul's Outlook for greater St. Cloud

Today: Mostly sunny & beautiful. Winds: light, under 5 mph. High: near 50

Tonight: Clear and frosty. Low: 24

Tuesday: Bright sun, still feels more like mid October. High: 50

Wednesday: Sunny start, then increasing clouds. High: 44

Thursday: Overcast, a little light rain possible. High: 42

Friday: Mostly cloudy, cool and damp. High: 43

Saturday: Still gray, a little light rain or drizzle possible. High: 45

Sunday: Partial clearing, breezy and cool. High: 42

Our winter intermission continues

The Great Ice Storm of '96. It was only 13 years ago that a major ice storm swept across Minnesota, downing countless trees and powerlines, making travel all but impossible. It turns out it was an omen of a very rough winter to come, with frequent ice storms and a string of blizzards, hitting central and western Minnesota very hard. According to the National Weather Service the ice storm moved through much of central and southern Minnesota and west central Wisconsin on November 14, 1996. Schools closed or began late over much of southern Minnesota the morning of the 15th due to a 1/2 inch thick layer of ice that covered much of the area. Flights were canceled at Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport due to ice forming on airplanes and runways, however mainly sleet was reported in the Twin Cities.

No severe icing, heavy snow or arctic blasts are brewing, in fact relatively mild weather will probably hang on through Thanksgiving. Temperatures this week run 5-10 degrees above average, not as mild as last week, but daytime highs will be more reminiscent of late October than mid November. Soak up some rare November sunlight!

The Snow was THIS high! We survived Friday, the 13th. Yes, we're getting off to a damp, chilling start to our Saturday, but it could be worse - much worse. 69 years ago today we were still digging out from the Great Armistice Day Blizzard of 1940. The storm put down a 1,000 mile wide carpet of heavy snow from Kansas to Minnesota and Michigan. Winds gusted close to hurricane force, heavy, windswept rain changing to ice, then snow, with whiteout conditions for over 24 hours. The mercury started out mild on November 11, reaching into the 60s across southeastern Minnesota. Thousands of duck hunters left the house, hearing a forecast that called for "falling temperatures, showers ending as flurries." It turned out to be lot's and lot's of flurries, 16" piled up in the Twin Cities, but 27" suffocated Collegeville, with 5-10 foot drifts commonplace. The storm knocked out power (and phone lines) and area highways turned into an auto-mangled mess. Travel was impossible, the mercury dropping more than 50 degrees in less than 24 hours across most of Minnesota. Duck hunters left the house in shirtsleeves and soon found themselves shivering uncontrollably, trying to find shelter against the horizontal snow and subzero wind chills. Many found themselves trapped on islands in the Mississippi, the waves too large to reach shore. A total of 49 Minnesotans lost their lives, half of them hunters. In the town of Watkins, MN 2 people died when trains collided, unable to see each other in the blinding snow. It took weeks for Minnesota to dig out, the storm indelibly etched in the minds of survivors. According to the MN State Climatology Office the Armistice Day Blizzard ranked #2 on the Top 5 Weather Events of the 20th Century - truly a storm for the ages.

Excelsior Boulevard in St. Louis Park, aftermath of the Armistice Day Blizzard. One big problem with the storm: there was no place to push the snow. Ever since this specific blizzard MnDOT has elevated Minnesota's major roads, to give the snow someplace to go! Next time you're zipping down a state highway (or freeway) you'll notice that the road elevation is significantly higher than the surrounding ditches. It may seem like common sense (today) but it took an epic blizzard to change the way we design and build our highways.

Surface Map from November 11, 1940. An unusually intense area of low pressure tracked across Iowa into Wisconsin. Ahead of the storm, mild southeasterly winds with temperatures (temporarily) pushing into the 60s - on the backside of the storm a tight pressure gradient (strong contrast in barometric pressure) whipped up wind gusts as high as 80 mph, producing blizzard and whiteout conditions statewide, whipping the flakes into 5-10 foot drifts.

An eastbound cool front will squeeze a little more rain from a slate-gray sky this morning, but a drying west/northwest wind should punch a few holes in a stale slab of stratocumulus clouds by afternoon, skies brightening (a little) as the day goes on. As high pressure builds in from the west I expect more sun on Sunday, highs well up into the 40s to near 50 across southern Minnesota. I still don't see any arctic fronts, no accumulating snow, no ice or traumatizing wind chill anytime soon (at least through the end of next week). Highs will reach the 40s each day, at least 5-10 degrees above average for mid November. Models are still hinting at a colder surge of air arriving immediately after Thanksgiving, but I don't see any monster-storms between now and Turkey Day. Rain? That's another story. The best chance of puddles will come Thursday and Friday of next week (the atmosphere warm enough statewide for plain old rain). We may see a brief respite from precipitation next Saturday (Nov. 21) but the GFS model is suggesting a rain/snow mix on Sunday, the 22nd, followed by significantly colder air the week of Thanksgiving. That said, temperatures won't be nanook - no arctic air (yet), but highs may be stuck in the 30s to near 40 the week of Thanksgiving, much closer to average. Yes, the honeymoon won't last forever, but I'm enjoying this respite from the wicked winds of winter....hope you are too.

A Week's Worth of Rain. Check out the impressive rainfall amounts leftover from "Ida" stretching from Alabama into the Carolinas and Virginia - 4-8" amounts commonplace. After a soggy October November is starting out mild and unusually dry. As of Friday morning only .16" of rain had fallen on St. Cloud since November 1, about .56" less than average to date.

The United (Record-Breaking) States of America. Since January 1, 2000 NOAA reports 142, 420 record highs across the nation. During this same, nearly 10-year period, a total of 291, 237 record highs were reported, many west of the Mississippi. Now this is a head-scratcher. Climate change deniers are emphatic that temperatures have "leveled off" during the last decade after peaking in 1998 (an especially warm El Nino year that has the distinction of being the warmest year ever recorded). But if that's the case what explains the apparent spike in record highs? If temperatures weren't still creeping upward, if there was truly no climate change involved, you'd expect the number of record highs to be comparable to the number of record lows - there would be a state of equilibrium, right? Am I missing something here. These observations were taken at 1,800 daily reporting weather stations around the USA and the data seems pretty sound to me. For more check out details at sciencedaily.com by clicking here.

Speaking of Records. Check out a DAY'S worth of record from coast to coast. Record rainfall for North Carolina and Virginia, and dozens and dozens of records for the warmest daily low temperatures on record from Arizona to Minnesota. To get specifics for each record on a (very cool) interactive map click here.

Paul's Outlook for greater St. Cloud

Today: Plenty of sun, cool and pleasant. High: 48

Tonight: Mostly clear and chilly. Low: 26

Monday: Lot's of sun, milder than average. High: near 50

Tuesday: Still dry, unusually sunny for November. High: 49

Wednesday: Clouds slowly increase, light rain possible late. High: 46

Thursday: Periods of light rain likely. High: 43

Friday: Mostly cloudy, cool & damp, showery rains linger. High: 42

Saturday (Nov. 21). Some sun, probably the drier, nicer day of the weekend. High: 45