Cloud seeding begins next month
By the Cuba Journal staff
Much of the Caribbean has been experiencing its worst drought in years, and Cuba has not escaped the crisis.
That’s why the island is now looking to make its own rain through cloud seeding, the government said this week.
The artificial rain program will begin September 15.
The two-month project aimed at increasing rainfall from clouds formed ver the area of the Cauto River Basin in Eastern Cuba.
Cloud seeding involves the “bombarding” of clouds with pyrocartridges of silver iodide.
So how does it work?
Silver iodide has a crystalline structure like ice that will induce freezing — when ice particles then form in supercooled clouds, they grow “at the expense of liquid droplets and become heavy enough to fall as rain from clouds that otherwise would produce none,” according to a study from the NOAA.
Cuba says the period from January to date has been the driest in the country since 1901.
The country’s 242 reservoirs have just 36 percent of their total filling capacity, with 25 of them either dry or “neutral.”
