Silver bullets: Can cloud seeding ease the drought in the West?
During the summers, Tyler Couch and his crew don’t have a whole lot to do except watch the sky. Sometimes they step outside to scan the pale horizon. Sometimes they huddle with meteorologists at North Dakota’s Bowman Regional Airport to look at radar reports.
When a storm does develop – the right kind of storm, with good size and clouds with enough moisture – Mr. Couch and the other pilots jump into action. They do what most pilots are trained not to do: fly toward a thunderstorm.
They position their aircraft on the fringes of the storm, consult by radio with the radar operators on the ground, and fire off flares
A summer of storm chasing“Why don’t other counties do it?”
