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SPEAKER 1: Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, behold, in my dream, I was standing on the banks of the Nile and 7 cows, fat and sleek, came up out of the Nile and Fed in the Reed grass. And seven other cows came up after them, poor and very gaunt and thin, such as I had never seen in all the land of Egypt.

And the thin and gaunt cows ate up the first seven fat cows, but when they had eaten them, no one would have known that they had eaten them, for they were still as gaunt as in the beginning. Then I awoke.

I also saw in my dream 7 years growing on one stalk full and good, and seven years withered, thin and blighted by the east wind sprouted up after them, and the thin ears swallowed up the seven good ears. And I told it to the magicians, but there was no one who could explain it to me.

Then Joseph said to Pharaoh, the dream of Pharaoh is one, God has revealed to Pharaoh what he is about to do. The seven good cows are seven years, and the seven good ears are seven years-- the dream is one.

The seven lean and gaunt cows that came up after them are seven years, and the seven empty ears blighted by the east wind are also seven years of famine. It is, as I told Pharaoh, God has shown to Pharaoh what he is about to do.

There will come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt. But after them, there will arise seven years of famine, and all the plenty will be forgotten in the land of Egypt. The famine will consume the land, and the plenty will be unknown in the land by reason of that famine which will follow, for it will be very grievous.

And the doubling of Pharaoh's dream means that the thing is fixed by God, and God will shortly bring it to pass. Now therefore, let pharaoh select a man discreet and wise and set him over the land of Egypt.

Let pharaoh proceed to appoint overseers over the land, and take the fifth part of the produce of the land of Egypt during the seven plenteous years, and let them gather all the food of these good years that are coming, and lay up grain under the authority of Pharaoh for food in the cities and let them keep it. That food shall be a reserve for the land against the seven years of famine which are to befall the land of Egypt, so that the land may not perish through the famine.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

DALE CONNOLY: From the 41st chapter of Genesis in the Old Testament, that's the story of Pharaoh's dream. Pharaoh went ahead to appoint Joseph as the great and wise person to build up a reserve of grain, which eventually saved Egypt from famine.

Today, in southwestern Minnesota, we're not exactly in a state of famine, but some bad years have come our way recently. On this program, some modern day Pharaohs will tell us what they think of the drought. Just as the Pharaoh of Egypt saw signs which were interpreted to indicate the coming of hard times, these observers have also noted signs.

Rather than the seven healthy cows, some have seen sunspots or a falling water level in Lake Michigan. Instead of seven withered ears of corn, they have seen other dry spells which might be able to tell us more about the present one.

Bruce Watson is a meteorologist and the author of the WCCO Almanac. At a recent weather modification meeting in Slayton, Watson explained some of the patterns that have been evident in our climate.

BRUCE WATSON: It might be just a good idea to back up and take a look at our Minnesota climate, and in fact, the general climate of this area. This area, of course, was native prairie. And the reason for that is the weather and climate of the area. When you get further East in Minnesota, you get into the forest lands. But this part here was Prairie for many, many centuries.

And of course, prior to that, we had a glacier, and we probably had many climatic changes since then and we'll have many climatic changes hence. But this part of the state, of course, gets much warmer temperatures, much higher evaporation, and significantly less rainfall than parts to the east.

The area I like to use is the division in Minnesota is Watonwan County. When you get into the east part of Watonwan County, you're in an area where the rain is generally fairly reliable, although of course, there are drought years there too.

When you get west of Watonwan County, then you get into the area where your rainfall becomes somewhat erratic. And of course, as you get into the far west of North Dakota and into Montana, then your rainfall, of course, is even quite a bit less than it is here. But I'm not sure it's that much more erratic.

But the prairie, one of the features of it is the fact that the rainfall is not regular like it is off to the east. It's just a fact of life. And of course, this all has to do with our orientation on the North American continent.

Now, there's two times a year when Gulf air, the real maritime tropical air, tends to come into this region. One is around June 13. There's a peak on June 13. And this is caused, of course, by the orientation of the pressure systems, the atmospheric pressure systems, as they move north and south with the sun, with the change of the season, change the way that they're oriented with regard to the continent and the ocean.

And what happens is that around June 5, the big floodgate has opened up so that these winds come right in off the Gulf and right into this part of North America. In fact, a lot of times this Gulf air gets as far inland as Saskatchewan.

But then around June 25, the spigot is turned off, the floodgates start to close. And the climate, the average weekly rainfall starts to decrease, and it decreases a great deal when you get into about the third week of July and the last week of July.

During about the third week of July, you only average half as much rain, let's say, as you do on an average week in June. And incidentally, if you ever want to pick a day to do something outside and not get rained on the afternoon of July 23 is the safest day of the year. You're extremely safe and not being rained on compared to the rest of the year.

It is raining 2% of the time on the afternoon of July 23, so it's almost a sure thing. But around the 20th of August, between the 20th of August and Labor day, we suddenly get the floodgates opening again.

And once again, this warm air from the Gulf of Mexico pours in. And we tend to get another rainy period in some parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin, upper Michigan get the wettest time of the year in early September. That's their wettest time of the year. And it's pretty wet here too.

But then after all, about September 14, then the floodgate is closed once again by the pressure systems, and you don't get any more tropical air in here until the following, perhaps late May or early June.

DALE CONNOLY: Obviously, the weather hasn't followed Watson's pattern this year. The floodgates he spoke of didn't open at all. At the very most, a bit of moisture may have trickled over the top and that moisture didn't come in June. It came in July, sparse as it was.

But some of the people who study weather aren't alarmed by this irregularity in the pattern. Many believe that dry weather has a pattern all its own. Bruce Watson has a theory to deal with that, as does Doug Boldman, Vice President and agriculture representative for a Marshall Bank who follows the weather as an important part of his job.

DOUG BOLDMAN: I think that I subscribe to a theory that may be somewhat different. I hear a lot of predictions, people that say that this is a sustained, long period of drought, that this drought is one that could go on all through the next decade, and any number of theories.

But I'd like to look back at 1934 through 1936, and you take a look at weather charts from then are very, very similar to what we saw in 1954 through 1956. The 1954 through '56 drought did not affect Minnesota seriously, but it was a very serious drought in all areas surrounding Minnesota and all over the nation.

It just happened that Minnesota formed a little pocket, and that was the only pocket in the whole country that did not have drought. So now we come to 1974, the same pattern seems to have developed. 1974 is the start of the drought period. 1975 got worse. 1976 is worse yet.

But we see signs nationwide that there are rains occurring in other places. Illinois, Iowa. You go West of the Missouri River out into Montana. Fantastic rainfall. So I think that the signs are all there. And if you study the weather maps, we should be coming out of this drought the next year.

As I said before, we will have to have adequate rainfall or above normal rainfall to get back our ground reserve, and we really can't anticipate any super crop, I would guess, until 1978 at least. But the signs are there that if my theory is right on it, that we are going to come out of it.

BRUCE WATSON: Back in 1971, I said that 1977 should be the peak year for a drought in this part of the country. And it's pretty much come true. We started to get pretty dry in 1974. And of course, last year was really bad.

And of course, once again this year, it's even worse over the state as a whole. But the research that I've done shows this all quite clearly, and it should last through the rest of the 1970s. And the 1980s then look, look pretty good that we will be getting quite a bit more rain once the 1980s come in.

Essentially, what we have is a cycle of about 40 to 44 years where we tend to get hot, dry, sunny weather. And in between, we get 20-year cycle of dry, but a cool and cloudy weather. Yeah, the 1950s were the cool, cloudy, dry time. And the 1930s, of course, were again sunny and hot and dry. If we go back to the 1890s, we find also that it was dry.

Now, I just might point out the way it works is that in any given year, a given area may get a lot of rain. But every-- at these 40-year periods, what happens is that there's large areas in the upper Midwest that go without rain or without enough rain over a growing season.

In some areas, 1934 was the peak year for the drought. In other areas, we get into Eastern Minnesota, Western Wisconsin, 1936 was the peak year. In other parts of the upper Midwest, 1935 or 1937, and in some cases, 1938 and 1933 were the peak years.

So the thing is that when you get into these decades at 40-year intervals, what happens is that you get large areas that don't get enough rain. And probably let's see if we had 40 to 70 around in the early 2010s or in the 2010s once again, we should see a general succession of years that have a lot of dryness.

DALE CONNOLY: All this talk of cycles sounds encouraging, since it assumes that we will come out of the dry spell within a few years. Coming out of a drought within a few years time is still nothing to be overjoyed about, since many farmers can't afford to wait a few years.

But it's better than not coming out of it at all. A recent associated press article reported that a University of Wisconsin researcher, Reid Bryson, believes that the conditions of the present drought are similar to the conditions during a drought which lasted from the year 1200 to the year 1400-- a 200-year dry spell.

The article quoted Bryson as saying, "The general circulation pattern of the atmosphere that prompted the 200-year drought is quite similar to what we are seeing now." Bryson went on to say that the stagnant circulation of the atmosphere was the cause for the trouble then, and it's the cause for trouble now. That drought lasted 200 years, said Bryson. So clearly, 200 years of drought in the breadbasket of North America is possible.

The occurrence of another 200 dry years is just speculation at this point, based on things that happened years ago. And in the study of weather, that's really all we have to go on-- what happened years ago. Climatologist Eben Browning of Albuquerque, New Mexico, looks very carefully at what has happened over the years, but not for the purpose of finding so-called cycles.

He believes that particles of dust in the stratosphere, put there by earthquakes, volcanoes, and other natural phenomenon, are beginning to accumulate to the point of reflecting some of the sun's rays away from the Earth, starting a long cooling trend worldwide. One indication of this process, which is also then affected by dry weather, is the Great Lakes water level.

EBEN BROWNING: I'm a little leery of the term cycle because there are so many people who simply analyze and say, oh, look, I found 180 year cycle. Well, that's not an explanation-- it's a description. And a description doesn't necessarily hold for tomorrow. One needs to seek understanding. This is why such fundamental work as Doctor Bryson is doing is so important.

The thing that I have done is to analyze climate for its physical causes. And I do find indeed that there are some things that can be identified as being related to certain well-known things. Now there's no science that's better known than astronomy. And we certainly know about tides and tidal forces. I don't mean just water tides, I mean the tidal forces on the crust.

So I have looked with reason of NASA now of Sandia and Harrington of the Naval Observatory. I have looked with them into the tidal forces and have been able to demonstrate by reference to the scientific literature that indeed, tides have been shown to trigger earthquakes, and earthquakes have been shown to trigger volcanoes.

And so one can physically account for the fact that with the variation in tidal forces which are so well-known from astronomy, one can find a correlation of temperature that can be attributed to atmospheric dust, and I mean stratospheric dust. It stays up there for years.

There is a phenomenon that was pointed out by Dr. Abbett of the Smithsonian who worked on this problem for many years, he pointed out-- I believe his first publication was in a Czechoslovakian Journal in 1938, that the lake levels of the Great Lakes vary in about a 44-, 45-year cycle.

And he attributed this to the sunspot cycle, which is, by the way, getting to be well known. And I think it can probably also be attributed to a combination of that with volcanic dust veil. It turns out that every 45 years approximately, the Great Lakes decline.

The last time they started down was about 1974. If you subtract 45 from that, the last previous time they started down was in 1929. Lake Superior, for example, has gone down each month.

If you take a 12-month running average of Lake Superior or a better lake to look at is Lake Michigan, Lake Huron. The Great Lakes are now going down below what is expected. They decline quite rapidly. And of course, this is due to the fact that there is less rain falling in the drainage basin.

The last time we had a series like this was starting in 1929 to 1934, and a previous series was 1887 to 1892. These times were desperate. And by the way, they ended in economic problems, just as we're having economic problems now.

And these things are quite periodic. There's been about a 42 and 2/3 year period, actually, since 1838. Every 42 and 2/3 years, the lakes go down. So this is in accord with the sunspot cycles and with the tidal forces and the volcanic activity.

DALE CONNOLY: The cooling trend, Browning predicts, is a long run phenomenon. It will happen gradually over many years. But how does that relate to the short run, particularly the dry spell we're experiencing now?

EBEN BROWNING: It's perfectly natural occurrence and will continue. And, oh, I'd guess that the area drainage basin of the Great Lakes will break out of the drought in about 1982. So it'll break out in 1982 if it goes like it has gone for the last 140 years. One can't be certain about that.

But all of the things that seem to apply before seem to be applying now. There's a general phenomenon of a hinging effect where the actual hinge runs right through Minneapolis-- about 45 degrees.

The area North of that will get drier when it's colder. The area south of that will get wetter when it's colder. But relatively, little change over long period running averages are the long-term, the nearest I can calculate it will continue to get colder for another 50 years. And then in about 100 years, it'll be back to about where it is now.

United States is in the best geographical position of any country on Earth, because whereas when it gets colder, well, we've been through a warm period. During the warm period, the northern tier of states has been exceptionally productive, where the southern tier states has its problems.

In a cold period, the southern tier of states becomes exceptionally productive, and the northern tier states has its problems. Since we're all one nation and more or less friendly, as a nation, we will thrive. There is no other nation that has a hinge down its middle.

The entire area of the USSR is above the hinge and they're in a bad area. So they got nothing but trouble for the next 100 years. They got nothing but trouble normally, but it's going to be worse than usual.

DALE CONNOLY: Sometimes it seems that for everyone with an opinion, there's someone to disagree. This is certainly the case with Eben Browning's theory of a cooling worldwide climate. Paul Damon and Steve Koonin, in a recent article in Science Magazine, say a warming trend known as the greenhouse effect, where man-made carbon dioxide fumes move to the upper atmosphere and keep warmth from leaving is offsetting the cooling trend, Browning indicates.

The result of all this is that we have no shortage of people who believe they can predict what the climate will do. To which one do we listen? Obviously, we must listen to them all. If some kind of decision becomes necessary to ensure our survival, we'll simply have to hope we make the right choice. But at this time, there's really nothing to do but wait for the drought to end, keep listening to the observers of the climate, and try to be prepared for the next drought.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

The next drought, already it's on the minds of many farmers in Minnesota, South Dakota, and Iowa. What can we do to be ready for it? Some Minnesotans think the proper action at this time would be to establish a Minnesota State Weather Modification Commission and assign it the task of seeding clouds all over the state. Certainly, it's something to think about.

South Dakota had such a statewide weather modification program until the last legislature refused to fund it. Anyone who was seriously thinking of advocating a similar state cloud seeding operation for Minnesota would naturally want to find out why that South Dakota program was discontinued.

JACK DONNAN: My name is Jack Donnan. As I was introduced, I am the former director of the Division of Weather Modification for the state of South Dakota. I say former because weather modification as a state function in the state of South Dakota no longer exists as of July 1st of this year.

The reason for that is that the legislature did not provide funds for fiscal year 77 to conduct a state County Cooperative Cloud Seeding Program as was proposed by the Division for this coming year.

I guess, further, I should explain because I'm certain that there will be questions in some of your minds as to why the legislature failed to provide those funds. There really were two reasons.

One is that for the last two or three years in particular, the field of weather modification in the state of South Dakota has had active opposition and well-organized opposition. And they have been effective in creating many questions in the minds of, obviously, some legislators.

However, being most reluctant to give them as much credit for the failure of the program in South Dakota as perhaps they would like me to give them, I really think that the primary reason that the program failed in South Dakota during the legislative session last year was the simple political battle, primarily between the governor and the legislature itself.

It is a well-known fact that the governor of South Dakota last year proposed to the legislature the largest budget that the state had ever had on record. I'm not certain that exact number. I think it was something like $176 or $178 million. For Minnesota, that may be peanuts. But for South Dakota, that was the biggest budget they ever had.

Prior to the legislative session, there were some members of the legislature, influential members, leaders of the legislature, that said that there would be $23 million cut from the governor's proposed budget.

Prior to the beginning of the legislative session, it was announced publicly that weather modification, the ASAP program, which is the Alcohol Safety Action Program or whatever it was called, and several others were actually spelled out as primary targets to be removed from the governor's budget to save those $23 million, which was their target.

The legislature did not make that goal of $23 million. However, they certainly saved $855,000 when they totally struck the weather modification program from the budget. It ended up being a partisan political battle for the most part, as were most of these battles over fiscal matters during the past session.

It's a matter of record as well that except for two or three cases in the two primary votes, which were directed toward the weather modification program, it was Democrats versus Republican, except for enough switchover one way or the other to account for the failure of the program.

As it ended up, the program was removed from the governor's budget. The significance of that. This was by vote of the Appropriations Committee. As a result of that, it meant that our appropriation had to be submitted to the legislature as a special appropriation, which requires, as do all special appropriations, a 2/3 vote of both houses.

It came up for a vote in the Senate, and we did receive a majority vote in the Senate of 19 to 16. But of course, required a 2/3 majority, which I believe its 24 votes. So we fell short of the 24 vote requirement or 2/3 vote, which was required for passage in the Senate.

It never did reach, of course, the House of Representatives. So there is no way of knowing what kind of vote there might have been there. In any event, I believe, I would hope that my friends from South Dakota here would agree with me that while obviously biased, I think this is a reasonably fair explanation of what happened to the program in South Dakota.

There is, obviously, a great deal of interest in Minnesota with regard to weather modification. There is interest because you have beautiful crops and you have a rich agricultural background. You have, obviously, been an imaginative farming state over the many years. And you have been lucky in having located or having sufficient moisture, for the most part, to provide the kinds of crops that you have been growing.

And as you have developed over these past 20 years or so, you have accepted-- you have experimented with and have accepted the use of hybrid grains, reluctantly at first, I dare say for many of you, but now standard operating procedure for many.

Not to ask whether or not hybrid grains are usable, the question now is, which brand is the best? You experimented with the various herbicides and insecticides and fertilizers, and you are still experimenting with some of these things.

Indeed, I just recently was talking to several of the farmers from this general area, only to find that vast quantities of money were really lost in the use of the herbicide that was injected into the ground, along with much of the corn in the area, because if you don't get rain within two or three weeks after that herbicide is placed in the ground, it is pretty well dissipated for some reason or other.

And of course, that rain didn't come. And so hundreds if not, well, I guess thousands of dollars per farm could have been lost in gambling on picking the right herbicide-- some won and some lost, I presume. I don't know that much about the different herbicides.

But in any event, you are using these tools to assist the agricultural community. Weather modification should be considered in that light and that light only. It is just another tool which the agricultural community, indeed, the community at large, can benefit from.

If all these other things that you use in farming benefit you as farmers or you as citizens of your particular area, you know that ultimately it's going to benefit the people in the communities in your area as well, because those communities succeed only so long as the farming community succeeds in the northern Great Plains.

I believe the technology is here. I think the evaluations are here to back up what I am saying. I believe the scientific community at large is now prepared to say that the evaluations on operational programs has shown that Cloud seeding can increase rain reliably and can decrease hail damage reliably.

So, do you then I guess number 1, want to take my word for it? Surely not. You want to investigate it more deeply as any responsible person should. But the science is here. There are many qualified people in the field of cloud seeding, which will be happy to respond to just about any question that you wish to put to them.

But should you wish to utilize this additional tool in addition to your herbicides, hybrid grains, et cetera? Should you wish to use weather modification as an additional tool in that agricultural arsenal of yours? I believe you have justification for doing it.

DALE CONNOLY: As Donnan said earlier, there was a well organized movement in South Dakota to fight cloud seeding. One of the leaders of that movement was Ronald Reid of Oldham, South Dakota.

RONALD REID: When the program first came into effect in South Dakota, I was a proponent for it. I was definitely sold on it, has gone to school in the University State University in Brookings.

My farm is an open farm for research work from the college. I live 40 miles west of Brookings. So they utilize my land. It's always available for new research work. But watching cloud seeding, in the early stages, I've seen him dissipate clouds that normally wouldn't have dissipated because I've watched clouds ever since I was a young lad.

And so then I started gaining all the data, information that I could from any source I could possibly, and then start evaluating by myself. And I found definitely, through this, that there was many unknowns and many things that claimed were made by people who were selling rainmaking or weather modification, where it didn't jibe with noted physics. Meteorologists, scientists, in the field.

DALE CONNOLY: OK, are you saying, then, that the technology is still not available or that the people who are running the cloud seeding operations are being untruthful in the results that they give us?

RONALD REID: I think the thing is in its infancy yet. And in some instances, they are untruths. For example, we take hail suppression. For example, they ran a randomized hail suppression program on what they call hail alley in Southwestern Nebraska and Northeastern Colorado and Northwestern Kansas.

And after, as a five-year program is set up, funded from federal money, which is a cost to taxpayers for $2.5 million. After running the program for four years, they found out that they were increasing hail, a proportionate even more than they were decreasing it.

So they discontinued the program, was supposed to run through the year 1976, and they're going to have to take a completely new approach on it because of what their own findings. And so here, our program in South Dakota, even after this has been released, they still go out.

And as been stated here tonight, this meeting, that they're still stating that they can suppress hail and they know something that our top meteorologists and scientists who have been running randomized tests don't know. And this is the thing that perplexed me. And if they are actually stepping out on a limb, so to speak, on statements such as this, who are we to take everything else that they say as pure and honest?

DALE CONNOLY: There was talk of hail suppression at the meeting Reid attended. Once again, Jack Donnan.

JACK DONNAN: We seed clouds with aircraft simply by flying either underneath the cloud or in front of the cloud and get into the significant updraft areas and again deliver large quantities of silver iodide and let the updraft carry the silver iodide directly into that thunderstorm.

The philosophy of hail suppression that we have to go by here is that we do not propose to stop the hail. What we are telling you when we say that we can reduce hail damage is that the hail damage is reduced as a function of producing a larger number of hailstones, the average size of which are much smaller than would have resulted from an unseeded storm.

Hail damage is a function of hail size. And while it is probably possible to catch a Cloud before it starts manufacturing hail and seed it in such a manner so that it will never be able to really manufacture hail.

This is indeed a very rare opportunity that a Cloud seeder would have. We usually are faced with a Cloud which already has hail in it, and so all we can do is try to make the average size of the hailstones smaller.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

- OK, [INAUDIBLE] 5 storm radar.

- OK. [INAUDIBLE] now at about 39. Ron, I'm coming up on your cloud, and I have a rain shaft at my 12 o'clock about a mile. And I'm starting now to pick up 100 to 200 foot per minute inflow.

- OK, proceed. Heading 090. And if the inflow is greater than about 3 or 400 feet per minute, then let's turn on one generator.

[END PLAYBACK]

DALE CONNOLY: There is much disagreement between people who support cloud seeding as to which type is better. There are two types. You've just heard part of a recording made in an airplane engaged in aerial cloud seeding over four counties in southwestern Minnesota.

Aerial cloud seeding is probably the best known type of weather modification. An airplane will fly right into a cloud and disperse silver iodide particles, which are smaller than the eye can see. If the cloud seeding works, moisture in the cloud will condense on these tiny particles.

Once enough water has condensed on a particle to form a drop, that water drops weight will cause it to fall out of the cloud and you have rain. The airplane I rode in was owned by atmospherics incorporated of Fresno, California. The pilot was Dave Duncan. Ron Przybylinski directed us from a radar site on the ground.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

- In Pipestone. I'm 080 at 41 miles, and I'm picking up now at approximately 500 per minute inflow. And it looks like it's pretty steady. So you want me to crank off one of the generators?

- Affirmative.

- How large is that cylinder on the wingtip? Do you have any idea?

- You mean the length of it? Oh, it's about 5 feet from one tip to the other. 4 and 1/2 to 5 feet. The center section there about a 2-- about a 2 foot section is the tank itself. It holds seven gallons of the liquid form silver iodide, and that's ammonium iodide, silver iodide, and acetone mixed together in a specific solution.

- And the liquid is pushed out the end and ignited.

- Yeah, it's pressurized by the system I have in the back here under 11 pounds of a pressure.

- It doesn't make any noise.

- No, there's no noise involved in that. As a matter of fact, you probably can't even see it. At night, you can see it real good because you can see the fire burning out.

- The south portion-- the southern portion of that cell seems to be-- it looks like we'll be the greatest inflow area.

- OK, I'll swing around here a little bit more to the south then.

- If you encounter a steady 1,000 feet or 1,500 foot per minute inflow, I would like you to ignite one TB7.

- C33 Roger.

- What did he want you to ignite there?

- One TB7-- that's one of the flares. Now all the flares I've got on are TB7s.

- OK, now I can see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10-- there's a dozen flares on each wing. You'll just do one of those.

- That's correct.

- At this time of night, one TB7.

- All right, one TB7 going off.

- Can you usually tell right after you see the cloud if you've done any good?

- Oh, you bet. I've gone through burning generators turned around and come back through. And I've had rain coming down, hitting my windshield. So it indicates to me that we've done some good in there.

[END PLAYBACK]

DALE CONNOLY: The other kind of cloud seeding is done from ground level by, small silver iodide generators like the one you hear. This generator releases tiny silver iodide particles just like the airplane. The difference here is that the ground-based system relies on wind updrafts to carry the particles into a cloud.

This isn't as risky as it might sound since clouds will not form unless such an updraft exists. You can be sure the current is there. Getting the particles into the current is the only problem. Crick and Associates of Palm Springs, California, operates the ground generators in Southern and Western Minnesota. A representative of that company, Tom Whalen.

TOM WHALEN: I was also kind of interested in Jack's statement that he thought that airplane was the way to go in the plains. I was down talking with the Weather Modification Board in New Mexico, and they told me that they thought a different type of seeding was appropriate in New Mexico, and that weather modification via ground generators was more appropriate to the plains.

It seems like everybody has their different opinions, and I think that's legitimate as long as there's a good dialogue between the people to bring out the pros and cons of both sides. AS you know, Cricks and Associates have always advocated ground generators.

We've been in the business since the early '50s and we've used ground generators almost exclusively. We started off originally with airplanes, but we found out that to affect a large scale areas, the only way to really go about it would be by ground-based generators.

And that you can put a continuous, constant plume over a wide area where it is a little more difficult to do it via other methods. We have developed our methods since the early '50s and have stuck with them pretty much.

We have found that we have used a dry crystal in which-- what we mean by a dry crystal is that it is formed directly by evaporation or crystallization. Most types of seeding, you have to use the silver iodide in acetone solution to more or less a wet crystal from mainly in the 1950s, the solution used was a sodium iodide.

And I think early in 1970, they found out that this particular solution was not really creating pure silver iodide crystals. And they have gone more to a pure type crystal. And Crick Associates have been using this type of-- more of a dry type crystal since the 1950s, and we haven't changed from there.

When you get a storm like we had on June 24th/25th or 25th/26th or the storm basically covered our entire project area, which is 8 million square acres. I seriously wonder how effectively or how continuously you can get a plume of silver iodide into a cloud over the whole period, which is about six hours of the storm's duration.

This is one reason why we use ground-based generators. We can feel there's a constant continuous plume from the ground going into the Cloud, whereas an airplane, you may be able to recede back and forth in front of the cloud. But while you're over here, that plume is deteriorating over here, and we don't feel that you are getting a continuous plume required for effective Cloud modification.

JACK DONNAN: The philosophy that we have, as I've indicated before for rain, increase seeding, which I believe is what Tom is also addressing right now, we do not believe, indeed, that it is necessary, nor is it desirable necessarily to seed every cloud.

We have very good evidence that when you have a sky full of clouds, as I believe I remember the day that you're speaking of, I was in the Mankato area at the time. And under those circumstances, we would not attempt to seed all of the clouds.

There are many times when you can find two good clouds very close together and seed them in such a fashion that you can cause those two clouds to merge from two relatively small clouds into one Cloud that develops into a system that's two or three times the size that the original clouds were. And this merged system can give you many, many times the amount of rainfall that those individual cells would have given.

DALE CONNOLY: Jack Donnan and Tom Whalen definitely don't agree on the methodology for weather modification. They do agree on weather modification regulations. If Cloud seeding is to be done in a state, says Donnan, regulatory legislation to make sure the job is done right is necessary.

JACK DONNAN: I cannot overemphasize the importance of having a good, sound piece of regulatory legislation put on your books in Saint Paul at the next legislative session. This need not have any dollars associated with it. It need not have any talk about Cloud seeding programs being organized and participated in by the state.

But you should have a piece of regulatory legislation on the books. I think that I cannot personally recommend that too strongly. I really think that's important. I urge you to ensure by whatever means you must, whether it's on the state or the county level, but making absolutely certain that there shall always be grassroots local control of the program.

If you don't have the guy that's pushing the tractor around the field, have somebody in his township or certainly in his county to go to gripe about something being done wrong, you are going to run into trouble just like that. And this is a controversial issue. You must realize that if you're going to get involved in whether mod, go out and buy a bottle of aspirin before you get started.

DALE CONNOLY: Environmentalists may ask what the effect of all this silver spouting is on the ecology, and well, they should. At the meeting I attended, someone asked that question. These were the replies of Jack Donnan and meteorologist Bruce Watson.

JACK DONNAN: My evidence here is based on environmental impact studies that have been made by the federal government on a number of experimental projects that have been proposed-- cloud seeding projects that have been proposed in which the Feds have been involved or proposed to be involved.

And as you're fully aware, the Federal people just love all that paperwork. And so they come out with an environmental impact statement that's like the Encyclopedia Britannica. And their section on silver iodide research that has been done is just about as thick as this WMA journal that I held up a little while ago.

But the quantities of silver iodide that are used are small. In fact, for instance, let me quote some figures, and I bet Tom has some that he can quote too. In the state of South Dakota, we have ceded-- one year, we ceded over 30 million acres of land.

We used 18 aircraft, six weather radar. And throughout the four-month period in which we were ceding, we dispensed something like 600 pounds-- I can't recall the exact number, of silver iodide over the entire four-month period.

And that even if we assume that all that silver iodide that was dispensed landed only in the counties that participating in the program, 600 pounds of silver iodide spread over 30 million acres. Well, it's one awful small amount of silver iodide per quarter section or per acre of land. I do have the-- here's the statistician. I bet he has all sorts of that garbage.

BRUCE WATSON: No, just the opposite. I'm going to do it the opposite way. But I looked into this at the request of the environmental organization. I'm a consultant, so I give advice to all sorts of people. And essentially, I told him to forget it.

And one way to bring it home is that if you carry some silver coins around in your pocket, just playing with them once a day, you'll pick up a lot more silver than you'll ever pick up from the silver that comes from the cloud seeding. So I told him that there's no reason at all to be worried about it, to be concerned, and they forgot about it.

DALE CONNOLY: People who support weather modification must make several decisions before they show their allegiance. First of all, they must decide that weather modification doesn't conflict with any of their religious beliefs. Secondly, they must convince themselves or be convinced that the technology is here and that it can be useful.

Then there must be a decision as to which method is best. If Minnesota is to see a state weather modification program, our state legislators will first have to answer these three questions for themselves. Then they'll have to decide if it's a useful way to spend taxpayers' money. It may take a long time.

Meanwhile, individual farmers will probably continue to contribute to a county weather modification fund, and the programs will probably continue through those means. The season next year may be wet, it may be dry, but weather modifications part in it will always be a hot topic for debate. I'm Dale Connolly.