The weather-wizard

Man’s great dream has always been to be able to control atmospheric events, in particular the rainfall. Every culture has a particular rite to bring on the rains, or on the contrary to keep them away. The possibility of producing rain is, with modern know-how and technologies, a dream that can partly be realized. It is not possible to produce rain when the skies are clear, without a cloud, but it is possible to make rain fall “to one’s desire” from clouds that are present in the sky. The most suited clouds are the stratified or cumulus-types of clouds, that can be forced to produce rain. The technique is that of cloud seeding. Dry ice crystals (CO2 at - 80°C) or silver iodide are introduced into the cloud, providing condensation nuclei that favour the formation of rain drops process. The operation is carried out by planes that are specially equipped for this purpose, however the operation is expensive and the results are not always guaranteed. The same technique is also used to provoke precipitations, in order to “release” the contents of a cloud in the form of rain, thus avoiding the possibility of precipitations in the form of hail, that would damage the crops. Cloud seeding can also weaken the tropical cyclones in the initial phases of their formation, and decrease the number of lightning strokes during a storm The most satisfactory results with this technique have been obtained when using it to discharge on the ground, and therefore dissolve the fog formations over airports.