Every fall I anticipate a wonderful phenomenon. The air begins to cool, the leaves turn brown and crispy, and I get to wear my fluffy feathers and drink coffee with autumnal-inspired spices under gray, rainy skies.
Except that rain isn’t happening.
The county is also anticipating the rain. Each year they pay a company to take an airplane, fly among the clouds, and “seed” them. This process doesn’t create rain exactly, but it helps clouds that already have potential for rain to produce more rain. Sort of like a little side bet to increase your winnings if you do indeed win.
As a flier of the friendly skies I don’t know that I like this idea. First, they are putting those little silver iodide pellets in my flight path, I mean what if I’m flying around with my beak open? I do have a tendency to yap my beak about things, even when I’m alone.
Bigger than that, not only is it kind of like gambling, it basically is a gamble. And with a sizable chunk of money at that. If I had an extra $350,000 in my pocket, I can think of a lot of things I’d spend it on that would not include both literally and figuratively “making it rain,” to borrow the pop culture reference to tossing about money.
But county officials acknowledge the risk, betting that one of these years it will rain, and when it does the seeds will be there.
Deputy director of the Santa Barbara County Public Works Department, Tom Fayram, said the process, which has been in place since 1981, has cost the county about the same each year. He also said it’s beneficial.
At least it’s beneficial when we get rain, which hasn’t happened in about five years. (Thank you climatologist Bill Patzert for filling my head with hopes—and prompting me to fill my garage with sand bags—in anticipation of a Godzilla El Niño.) But when it does rain, seeding can increase the amount of rain up to 21 percent, based on previous incidents. Not a bad return on a few silver pellets, unless you average it against all the years there was no rain—or supplemental rain. I’m no math expert but cost-wise that would be some expensive extra rain.
I wonder if I’m the only one worried about this whole cloud-seeding thing. In most of the years I’ve heard about it, I’ve seen few people, if any, object to project. What I do know is that maybe $350,000 is a drop in the bucket to the county. It could be, but not in this drought. I’d say every drop counts, and perhaps, next year we should reconsider this whole cloud-seeding thing.
Is it worth it overall? Will it make a difference? If we do get clouds to produce more rain will we be able to corral them over the areas we need the rain, like Cachuma Lake? Or will they wander off and drop their precious cargo over someplace silly, like the ocean?
Meanwhile I’ll bank on breezy days, and chilly nights while wearing my warmest beanie, sipping a pumpkin spice latte, and dreaming of a wet winter.
The canary wants to read a romantic book by the fire as a cold winter rain falls outside. Send comments to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Oct 13-20, 2016.
