Up, up and away into the atmosphere

Platte Valley elementary students witnessed a rousing outdoor lesson in cloud seeding last week, with help from the Saratoga-Encampment-Rawlins Conservation District's (SERCD) Natural Resource Education Program.

The field days were organized in part of SERCD and lesson presenters included meteorologists Dan Gilbert and Brad Waller, both of the Fargo, N.D.-based Weather Modification Incorporated (WMI). For each day throughout Feb. 10-13, the two presented part of their cloud seeding research project, which was set in place to create more snow in the Medicine Bow and Sierra Madre Mountains.

Students in attendance ranged from Kindergarten through sixth-grade, and came from both Saratoga Elementary and Encampment K-12 School.

For one of the project's fun visuals, Gilbert used helium to fill up a large latex balloon, which was to have a radio device called a "radiosonde" tightly tied to it with string. He said the radiosonde would then fly the through the air and record current weather conditions, which would determine if the weather was good for cloud seeding or not.

As the balloon was being filled, students covered their ears and screamed in excitement, expecting it to eventually burst from too much helium.

"After I release the balloon, it will get to the very top of the atmosphere where's there's less pressure, and get three or four times bigger than it is now until it finally pops," Gilbert said during the presentation. "It will go up all the way up to 50,000 feet, or 10 miles high, so higher than planes or jets fly. It will take an hour to get up there, and it goes up at about 10 mph. We'll have a parachute attached to it, so the radiosonde falls nice and slow and doesn't hurt anyone, and it will probably land somewhere in the forest."

Before it was released, Gilbert said the radiosonde attached to the balloon would record data including temperature, humidity, wind speed and wind pressure in the atmosphere, in order to determine if the weather was good or not good for cloud seeding. He pointed out the temperature censor, humidity censor to detect air moisture, antenna and GPS receiver on the radiosonde device.

Gilbert told students the temperature, humidity, wind speed and wind pressure detected and recorded from the radiosonde is then transmitted to a computer. He said the computer data lets them know if the weather is good enough for cloud seeding.

"We use that GPS data to determine the four things we're trying to learn, which are temperature, humidity wind and pressure," he told the students. "On the bottom is the antenna, and that sends the data back to us and let's us receive it on this computer. It will also have a battery back that will attach onto it. The radiosonde will get all the data from here to the top of the atmosphere."

Once the balloon and radiosonde were released into the air, students cheered and waited to watch them fly before fading into the clouds. Gilbert later explained the project's purpose was to increase snow in the mountains, and that about 50 weather balloons are released every winter as part of the study.

"We're trying to increase in the snow up in the mountains, and to do that we release particles into the air that go up into the clouds and make snowflakes," he said. "Whenever the wind and temperature are right, we learn that from balloon data, then we go ahead and start releasing cloud seeds. They go up the mountains and make snow up there on top of the mountain peaks. We're trying to make more snow, so there is more water in the river in the spring where the snow melts, and it's all just research right now."

Gilbert said the actual seeding part of the process, in which the chemical particles are dispersed into the sky, is done through ground-based generators placed in the mountains. WMI had built the generators, which will be dismantled this summer, and the seeding particles come from a burned solution of silver iodide.

"There are eight different sites that have the seeding generators, and they have a propane tank and solution tank," Gilbert said. "It goes up piped up into a burn chamber, and it just releases the particles and burns it off. There are eight in the Med Bows and eight in the Sierra Madres, and 10 up in the Wind River Range. They're all at different angles to the wind, so we can hit from many different wind directions."

Gilbert said he and Waller have done winter season research for cloud seeding in Saratoga for the past five years. He said that in total the project has been worked on in Saratoga for the past nine years, and typically from November to April each winter season.

However, April 30 of this year will mark the end of the nine-year project.

"During the winter season we have come back to Saratoga to do this research project, but this is the last year we'll be in Saratoga doing research," Gilbert said. "We both came onto this project in 2009, and we came in to replace some other meteorologists who moved on to other jobs. Things are still very preliminary, and we've still got the rest of this season to go. We'll be done with our research at the end of this winter."

Gilbert said it was a pleasure to help out SERCD with the presentation, and said the district was interested and instrumental in getting the project off the ground. He said the project's analysis will be done by the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., but that official results showing the snow increase will be published by the end of 2014.

"All the analysis and collection of data and everything is done by the National Center for Atmospheric Research out of Boulder, and the project is run by the Wyoming Water Development office," Gilbert said. "We do the seeding and they analyze all of it and crunch the numbers, and they are supposed to have all the numbers and everything published. Everything will be sent out to the state assembly and published in journals by the end of 2014. They are holding onto all of the results until the end, and will put it all out at the same time."

Jean Runner, who helped organize the field day, has served as the SERCD's district's education coordinator for its Natural Resource Education Program since 2002. She said she works with students in Saratoga, Encampment and Rawlins on a monthly basis, but that this was the first time she had Platte Valley come on site for this project during the 2013-14 school year.

"In 2012 we had second, third and fourth grade students from Rawlins Elementary come over, but this if the first time for Encampment and Saratoga," Runner said. "I enjoy working with kids and giving them a chance to learn more information about natural resources. The kids are close to land where they have opportunities to go to mountains, and a lot of their parents have jobs in ranching or other things related to agriculture. That ties in with the education here."

Runner said that before the field day, she had gone into local classrooms to explain the project to students for preparation. She said she wanted people to know more about the project before witnessing the weather balloon launch.

"Last week I was at Encampment, and this week I was at Saratoga," Runner said. "We started with the water cycle, which we thought would be a good starting point, and expanded onto weather balloons."

Runner said she was grateful that WMI took the time to present part of the research to elementary school students.

"We appreciate Dan and Brad for what they did for us, and they have been great to work with through the years," she said. "We asked if they would be able to do some balloon launches for school kids in 2012, and they were gracious enough to do it. This was also the last year of the program for them, so we wanted to make sure the Saratoga and Encampment kids got to participate."

Saratoga Elementary School second-grader Emily Gonzales said she enjoyed watching Gilbert's hair get stuck to the weather balloon during the demonstration.

"I liked how when he let it go it was so floppy, and when he was filling it up with air and tying the string around it, his hair got stuck to the balloon," she said. "That was called static electricity."

Garrett Sperry, another SES second-grader, said he found the inflation of the weather balloon exciting, and liked how it blew around in the wind.

"When he was blowing up the thing, it looked like it was going to pop," he said. "When he let it off it went so high and went really fast, and when he was coming out of the garage and taking it to where he lets go of it, it was flopping around."