Weather Modification History
It's been going on for quite some time. Just a little background for anyone interested in the origins.
Hail Suppression in the Hudson Valley, 1956 and 1957
Thomas J. Henderson
Abstract
From July to September 1956 and May to September 1957, a hail suppression program was conducted over the Hudson Valley area in New York, sponsored by The Hudson Valley Crop Services Co-op. Voluntary contributions from apple growers throughout the Hudson Valley, and others, supported operations of the Weather Modification Company of San Jose during both seasons. Equipment included one cloud seeding aircraft, a network of 75 to 77 ground generators, and a 3 cm radar system. Within these two seasons, a total of 69 storms moved through the lludson Valley area and 700 individual cells were logged by the radar. Major hail events were produced by cells embedded in frontal associated squall lines in 1956 and mostly from air mass thunderstorms in 1957. Hail damage was reported over some 1% of the total target area in 1956 and about 6% in 1957.
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BACKGROUND
The first cloud seeding project, intended to reduce hail east of the Mississippi River, was conducted in the Hudson River Valley of New York, just south of Albany, in 1956 and 1957. This was only a decade after the discovery of dry ice and silver iodide as nucleating agents by Drs. Vincent Schaefer and Bernard Vonnegut, working at the General Electric Research Laboratory in Schenectady, NY. The first operational programs, designed to increase precipitation principally in the Catskill Mountains as an aid to the water supplies of New York City, had been conducted in 1950-51.
In May of 1956 a group, composed principally of apple growers, formed the Hudson Valley Crop Services Co-op. Mr. Walter Schreiber and Mr. Elsmore Fraleigh, both of Red Hook, were elected President and Secretary-Treasurer. The Weather Modification Company, a commercial cloud seeding group in San Jose, CA, was hired by the Co-op to conduct operations to reduce hail. The designated project area was roughly 21 x 70 miles in Dutchess, Ulster, Columbia and Orange counties (Figure 1).
sauce: https://journalofweathermodification.org/index.php/JWM/article/view/55/39