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The North Dakota Thunderstorm Project

Anyone who has lived in North Dakota has probably wished they could change the weather at some point. For most of human history people have wanted to change the weather, and today some people do just that. Weather modifiers mainly work with clouds to increase precipitation, reduce hail, or disperse fog.

One of the largest research endeavors in weather modification took place in North Dakota in the summer of 1989. Running from June 12th to July 22nd, the North Dakota Thunderstorm project set out to study thunderstorms … aspects like their structure, dispersion, and hail production. An Associated Press article from this date in 1989 details the project. It was a 2.3 million dollar effort was funded by the federal government and the state, with some additional money from the National Science Foundation. It involved professors and students from over 12 universities assisted by 10 state and federal agencies and 5 private companies. Researchers came from as far as Greece, Morocco, South Africa, and Jordan.

Unfortunately, studying weather is hard because it doesn’t always do what you want. The director of the North Dakota Atmospheric Resource Board at the time, Bruce Boe, said that out of 60 to 70 experiments, around 40 were successful. Successful meaning the equipment worked and the weather conditions were right. For instance, seven students nicknamed “the hail-chasers” set out to collect hail samples, but missed the bad weather and wound up finding only light rain. While Boe admits that there were not as many thunderstorms as they wanted, he still stated that they make tremendous progress.

Today, Bruce Boe continues to study weather modification as Weather Modification Incorporated’s vice president of meteorology.

While critics say the results of weather modification is inconclusive, rancher Wayne Mrnak said in a recent article that hail suppression allowed his family to have bountiful crops for many years.

Whether or not weather modification works, the North Dakota Thunderstorm Project remains some of the most important research on the subject.

Dakota Datebook written by Lucid Thomas

Sources:

https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0477%281992%29073%3C0145%3ATNDTPA%3E2.0.CO%3B2

https://www.apnews.com/f7365a9cff46ca5bdad48ff0f5b33492

http://www.swc.nd.gov/arb/research/NDTP.html

https://www.weathernationtv.com/news/scientists-to-launch-new-tornado-research-mission/

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?client=firefox-b-1-d&biw=1173&bih=536&um=1&ie=UTF-8&lr&cites=12638019259056678916

https://theweek.com/articles/597995/quest-change-weather

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