![]() ![]() (Madeline Carter/Las Vegas Review-Journal) a Memorial Day weekend tradition in Southern Nevada: Taking the family to Lake Mead. In a world where water is becoming ever more valuable, that’s an easy win-win.Ĭontact Colton Lochhead at Follow on Twitter.Armando Tirre III, 8, left, splashes Ivan Bojorquez, 10, as they play in the water on Sunday, May 28, 2023, at Lake Mead in Boulder City. That means there will be more opportunities for researchers to conduct and analyze seeding efforts, which have the happy byproduct of producing more snowfall, and eventually more runoff into river systems across Nevada and the West, McDonough said. Joe Lombardo signed Senate Bill 99 into law, which allocated $1.2 million to Desert Research Institute specifically to bolster cloud seeding projects over the next two years. ![]() The typical cost of desalinated water is about $2,000 per acre-foot of water.īut cloud seeding, McDonough said, is much cheaper - coming in at roughly $10 per acre-foot. Those projects are pricey, though, with the cost to build desalination plants typically ranging in the hundreds of millions of dollars. That’s sent states and cities searching for other resources, and there’s been plenty of talk about desalinating ocean water as part of that. are in the midst of more than two decades of drought that has brought hotter and drier conditions and dwindled the Colorado River’s annual flows by roughly 20 percent. One five-year study conducted in the mid-2000s in Australia showed that cloud seeding increased precipitation in the target area by 14 percent. These days, he said, scientists are “pretty confident” that cloud-seeded areas produce about 10 percent more snowfall than if there was no cloud seeding at all. McDonough said there is research dating back to the 1950s on cloud seeding showing decent success with the endeavor. “It’s part of the earth’s crust right now, so we’re just taking advantage of them to create ice crystals,” McDonough said. It already exists naturally and has no known harmful effects on humans or the surrounding environments. McDonough said the silver iodide compound used by Desert Research Institute is plenty safe, too. That silver iodide then acts as nuclei of sorts to spark the formation of the ice crystals. When a storm cell moves into one of their seeding areas, scientists burn a small amount of a chemical compound - silver iodide - from ground-based generators, the aerosols of which eventually reach the clouds. ![]() There’s a whole lot of science behind the actual process of seeding clouds, but the gist of it is that clouds need a certain process to happen in order to turn their moisture into precipitation.Ĭloud seeding works by improving the conditions inside the cloud by introducing dust particles, which can help clouds create the icy crystals required to produce snow, McDonough said. So what exactly goes into making clouds give us more snow? Scientists with the institute wrapped up their latest cloud seeding research and operations season in May across six mountain ranges, including the Spring Mountains near Las Vegas, the Lake Tahoe Basin, the Ruby Mountains in Northern Nevada and ranges across Colorado.įor Nevada - the nation’s driest state - an extra 10 percent can go a long way, especially in parts of the state where the water basins are already overallocated, McDonough said. And it’s safe,” said Frank McDonough, who leads Desert Research Institute’s cloud seeding program. And as states like Nevada grapple with dwindling water supplies along the Colorado River, which supplies 90 percent of the water in the Las Vegas Valley, it’s one the Silver State is investing in. It’s a practice that research has shown can add more than a little extra snow to the winter totals. No, they’re not wizards, even if the work they do seems like magic.įor scientists at Nevada’s Desert Research Institute, using cloud seeding to increase snowfall has been part of the job for more than half a century, dating back to the early 1960s. (Rachel Aston/Las Vegas Review-Journal) mountain peaks across the West, it’s their job to make it snow. Clouds above downtown Las Vegas on Sunday, July 23, 2023. ![]()
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