Weather control as a Weapon

[Shugster]

I caught a program on TV last night about the possibilites of using the Weather as a Weapon.

The program was centred on this incident in UK in 1952...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/16/newsid_2960000/2960180.stm

Look at the in context part about MOD involvement...

There was some speculation the flash flooding could have been caused by Ministry of Defence experiments in rain-making. By dropping dry ice into clouds, the idea was to start a heavy storm which would bog down enemy movements.
Survivors of the disaster called for - but never got - an inquiry. The MoD denied it was to blame.

Apparently called, "Operation Cumulus".

More info here...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1516880.stm

Quite interesting and I suppose to a certain extent possible. Has anyone else heard of this or seen anything on it?

 

[Reiver]

No duff Shugster, I've been reading about rain and cloud seeding in an old Meteorology book that I found. Apparently it's a very hit and miss affair, with usually only short lived showers occuring and very often many miles from where the seeding took place.
I think there was probably a lot of rain upstream prior to the flood, and the hard ground let the water run off straight into the river causing the flash flood.

 

[Ex-Bay]

THe 50s and early 60s were a time of experiments to make rain fall. The official reason was to try and make the desert bloom, or so we were told. I remember the Lynton & Lynmouth disaster. My Dad took me there after the village was declared safe; it was a ghost town and the rive still runs along what was the main road.

 

[MAINJAFAD]

Having been to the museum at Lynmouth that covers the event, I known why that 1952 flood was so bad. There had been heavy rain over Exmoor for days that had saturated the ground, plus when the Storms that day hit the area, the strong winds uprooted a number of trees on the banks of the Lyn river's due to the ground being so soft (within Lynmouth the river branches into the West and East Lyn, which drain quite a sizable area of Exmoor). These trees and other debris ended up getting log jammed against stone bridges up on the moor thus damming the rivers until the water pressure caused one of the bridges to collapse, resulting in the wall of water rushing down stream, which caused further ‘dammed’ bridges down the river to let go (28 bridges on the twin rivers were destroyed or badly damaged). The village is located within a gorge at the mouth of the rivers which caused the water to get as high as it did (The flood level lines marked in the village are quite scarily (at least 20 feet over normal river level if memory serves)). This high fast flowing water, then picked up boulders and more trees from within the gorge which then hit the village, along with debris downstream of the bridge that first let go. The thing is, there were floods all along the west coast that day, hence this rain-making story causing the disaster is more conspiracy theorist BS (which is confirmed by the fact that the Village had two bad floodings almost as bad long before aircraft existed).

As for Weather Control, A number of countries actually do cloud seading to try and make it rain where they want it to.

Edit - Found this on the Net, confirms most of what I've written above, but for the fact that the flood level was a wopping 12 metres (39 feet).

 

[Toxicseagull]

As for Weather Control, A number of countries actually do cloud seading to try and make it rain where they want it to.

i think its done by dumping some kind of silver idodie high up in the sky.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3893671.stm

 

[Cake or Death]

there was a program on this sort of thing being used by the militry. It touched on this particular op.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Popeye

 

[MAINJAFAD]

i think its done by dumping some kind of silver idodie high up in the sky.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3893671.stm

Tis indeed mainly done with silver iodide, though Dry Ice also does the job as does liquid propane dispersed as a gas in the cloud.

China does it with ground launched rockets dumping silver iodide into clouds, according to the Wiki entry on the subject, it actually causes political problems between different regions within the country, with one region accusing others of nicking their rainfall!!!

Apparently, cement can also be used, though sometimes things can go badly wrong, as the Russian Air Force once found out Here.

Plus of course, the use of Weather Control as a Weapon of War has been banned by International Treaty. Here

 

[Shugster]

Thanks for the replies.

So the village was a combination of a few factors and maybe at a push cloud seeding added a very small effect to it.

Operation Popeye looks quite interesting, it seems to be absolutely possible that you can start a shower but have no ability to influence its direction.

Hmmmm, looks like I could develop my doomsday weapon yet. DT_Xtremez_30:

 

[Ex-Bay]

Thanks for the replies.

So the village was a combination of a few factors and maybe at a push cloud seeding added a very small effect to it.

Operation Popeye looks quite interesting, it seems to be absolutely possible that you can start a shower but have no ability to influence its direction.

Hmmmm, looks like I could develop my doomsday weapon yet. DT_Xtremez_30:

I hope you will practice in the Deserts and not the EU.

 

[pie sandwich]

I dunno about weather control but the wind coming out of my hoop is deadly DT_Xtremez_14:

 

[Rambling Sid]

If they are using the weather as a weapon then I must be under attack. I have never seen as wet a summer since I left the U.K.

 

[sculthorpe]

wet summer

wet summer

Here in Vermont it's the second wettest summer since records have been kept, in the late 1700s !