Cloud seeding suspended

The Wyoming Water Development Office has suspended cloud seeding operation in the Medicine Bow and Sierra Madre Ranges portion of the Wyoming Weather Modification Pilot Program (WWMPP) because of current snowpack conditions.

Snow water equivalent values in the Medicine Bow Range reached, and now exceed, established operational criteria, forcing the immediate suspension of operations in that Range. Because of the randomized nature of the study’s experimental design, shutting down one of the two ranges causes the other range to also be shut down.

“Twenty-nine cases were achieved this season as part of the 2013-14 winter field campaign, and compares favorable to 15 and 17 cases in the two subsequent years,” said Wyoming Water Development Office Project Manager Barry Lawrence. “It is unlikely that conditions will recover, such that operations will continue until either suspension is hit, or until the end of the season, which is slated for April 30.”

The State of Wyoming’s project was specifically designed to access cloud seeding as a long-term water management strategy in water-short basins. Key to the state project is a strong independent physical and statistical evaluation of the program’s results by the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

“With the completion of the 2013-14 field campaign and analyses of results, the Wyoming Weather Modification Pilot Program will be uniquely successful in completing a robust experiment testing the efficacy of winter time cloud seeding from ground-based generators,” Lawrence said. “Final results from the study will be available during the first quarter of 2015.”