Western Kansas Weather Modification Program
Source: Nando Times
May 8, 2000
Atop his tractor, Dennis Franklin watches time and again
as storm clouds gather over his parched farmland in northwest Kansas
and a handful of small planes appear, releasing dry ice and flares
into the base of the storm in an attempt
to stop hail from forming.
Then he looks on as the storm clouds dissipate, instead
of dumping a soaking rain on his wheat, corn and milo fields.
Franklin and his neighbors wonder whether the Kansas
Weather Modification Program, which expanded its cloud seeding into
northwest Kansas in 1997 to suppress crop-destroying hail, actually is
robbing them of precious rainfall.
"This is basically a farming area, and you are messing
with our livelihood," said Franklin, who farms in Rawlins and Thomas
counties. "We have lived here quite a few years and taken it as it
came. But that is part of farming. We
don’t need anybody influencing it, especially when they don’t have any
more control than they do."
In response to the weather program, one of the largest
of its kind in the nation, Franklin and a few neighbors formed a group
called Citizens for Natural Weather. Soon the dissident group grew to
more than 550 people from Cheyenne, Rawlins, Decatur, Sherman and
Thomas counties, among others.
Last April, Cheyenne County in Kansas passed a
resolution of non-support of the cloud seeding program. Two months
later, Rawlins County decided to end its participation. This past
February, Decatur County commissioners also wanted out. A petition is
currently circulating in Thomas County to
bring the issue to a vote there. In neighboring Colorado, Kit Carson
County withdrew from the cloud seeding program.
Meanwhile, those who have been doing weather
modification in southwest Kansas for 25 years dismiss the groundswell
of opposition as simply a public misunderstanding of the science of
weather modification.
"Those people are not meteorologists, they are not
scientists," said Keith Lebbin, manager of the Western Kansas
Groundwater Management District. "It is impossible to delete their
rainfall and make it fall downwind. If this program is as bad as those
people indicate, we wouldn’t be doing it."
Now part of the debate is a new study released by Kansas
State University, done by Brian Vulgamore for his graduate degree
program. Vulgamore, 23, works his Scott City family farm with his
father and brother. They grow more than 8,000 acres of crop and finish
about 2,000 head of Herefords on
two small feedlots.
"I always thought they did something positive, but I
wasn’t sure," Vulgamore said about the weather modification programs.
"Being a farmer, I wanted to know if there is a possibility they are
reducing my rainfall. Are they reducing hail?"
Vulgamore examined rainfall data for affected counties
dating back to the 1940s and looked at hail data dating to 1948. He
concluded it couldn’t be scientifically proven that the cloud seeding
program was affecting rainfall or hail in the region.
That is because to come up with a statistically
significant reduction - given the wide variability of western Kansas
weather - the program would have to suppress hail by 60 percent. That
is something nobody is claiming the weather modification program can
do.
But if the cloud seeding succeeds in reducing hail even
by just 3 percent, the program would pay for itself just in the
savings to farmers, Vulgamore said.
"It is a good technology," he said. "There is a huge
possibility of benefit to this technology."
Vulgamore found that counties within the program’s
target area had a 15 percent drop in hail-related crop loss when
compared with neighboring counties not in the target area. But he was
quick to also note that such a reduction could be as easily attributed
to natural hail patterns.
He noted that every one of the five to seven evaluations
of the weather modification program done by the Kansas Water Office
and other researchers through the years has come back with different
results.
And Vulgamore was especially critical of a 1994 study
published last year in the Journal of Weather Modification that
concluded the Kansas Weather Modification Program was decreasing
rainfall by seven-tenths of an inch, while claiming that such an
amount wasn’t economically significant.
"They can’t say that with scientific certainty," he
said. "But if they are changing rainfall by even a small amount, it
will be economically significant."
An added inch of rain during the growing season in arid
western Kansas can mean an economic gain of about $18 million to
farmers there, according to Vulgamore’s study. A 1-inch loss of
rainfall during the growing season translates into economic losses in
excess of $19 million for western Kansas, the study found.
At the Western Kansas Groundwater Management District,
Lebbin said he had "no problem" with Vulgamore’s study, saying it
closely correlates to other studies done by the Kansas water office.
The Kansas Weather Modification Program covers 16,000
square miles, or 10.2 million acres. Last year, it included 16 full
and six partial northwest Kansas counties and portions of three
Colorado counties. It was begun in 1975 in southwest Kansas by the
Groundwater Management District in Lakin. It expanded in 1997 into
northwest Kansas.
Texas has 10 similar projects, and the entire state of
Oklahoma has a weather modification program, as does western North
Dakota, among others.
The latest scientific findings do little to ease the
fears of Franklin, a fourth-generation farmer who runs cattle in
addition to raising crops. He said the latest study could be
interpreted many ways.
"I’ve farmed for 25 years and I never saw clouds
dissipate in the way I’ve seen them in the last few years," he said.
But Wayne Bossert, the manager of the Northwest Kansas
Groundwater Management District, said that when clouds fall apart, it
doesn’t mean cloud seeding is responsible. That phenomenon is caused
by the dew point where the clouds form, he said.
Lebbin also dismissed Franklin’s observations: "That is
just not true. If you have that kind of power with the program, it
would be awesome. But it doesn’t work that way."
by Roxana Hegeman
Associated Press
http://www.nandotimes.com/healthscience/story/0,1080,500201594-5002785
64-501479939-0,00.html