Ward County residents will vote on a June 9 ballot measure to end or continue a weather modification program that has existed for around 50 years. If the measure is approved, the commission will authorize the program for another five years.

Proponents and opponents disagree on the program’s effectiveness and cost.

Earlier this month, Friends of Weather Modification held a virtual meeting to discuss the benefits, inviting George Bomar, a weather and climate specialist who oversees the rain enhancement program at the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation. Bomar has spent 45 years working with weather modification and has been involved in a number of research projects.

“As far as rain enhancement is concerned, we’ve been doing that in Texas for the last 25 years. This year, we will be seeding in over 30 million acres,” Bomar said. “We’re convinced of the fact that the amount of additional rain generating from thunderstorms that are seeded is quite substantial.”

Jill Schramm/MDN Opponents of weather modification take a stand on a Minot billboard against a ballot measure.

Weather modification opponents cite studies finding rainfall enhancement in North Dakota to be statistically insignificant, but it particularly notes the lack of data regarding hail suppression, which is considered the major reason for the local program.

North Dakotans Against Weather Modification quotes a large study by the National Research Council in 2003 that found “no scientifically credible evidence hail can be suppressed.”

Bomar said the NRC study was disappointing in stating the evidence for hail suppression isn’t there, but he agrees more research is needed.

“I’ll be the first to say that of all of the technologies that we have developed for dispersing fog, enhancing snowpack, enhancing rainfall and suppressing hail, that hail suppression technology is further behind the other three,” he said. “As far as hail suppression, it’s the most challenging because you’re dealing with the most complex weather systems that are out there.”

Darin Langerud, executive director for the North Dakota Atmospheric Resource Board, said research is taking place in Minot that could help address that issue.

“We’ve focused some of our research money on dual polarization radar evaluation,” Langerud said. “We are involved currently in a study that’s taking advantage of dual-pol radar data from the Nexrad radar, and this will be an analysis that looks at clouds that are seeded versus clouds downwind of the Minot radar – McHenry County and downwind that are never seeded. Over time, we’re hoping to analyze what differences can we see in the development of hail in the seeded of clouds from radar data and the unseeded clouds from radar data.”

Proponents see value in keeping weather modification because of the ability to piggyback research. However, opponents object to putting the cost of that research on the weather modification counties only. Weather modification exists in Bowman, McKenzie, Mountrail, Ward and Williams counties and part of Slope County.

“It’s not our job to be the guinea pigs,” said Roger Neshem, Berthold, with North Dakotans Against Weather Modification. “We should be paid to do this, not paying to have somebody do this to us.”

“Hail loss rates in Ward County have remained the same since before the program started to today,” Neshem said, noting that even if weather modification works, it is protecting Ward County from an unlikely threat.

“The northern half of North Dakota, Montana, Minnesota have the lowest incidence of severe hail in the United States. Severe hail is considered one inch or larger and that’s generally what’s thought to damage roofs and cars,” he said.

“If it did work so great, everybody would do this because it hails all over the United States,” he added. “Nobody else has been in the program and left and then asked to come back, because even if they were successful, the differences they claim to do are so miniscule.”

Instead, he said, western Kansas, with six to eight days a year of one-inch hail, discontinued its hail suppression program.

“If the program is not good enough to see results in Kansas, where they actually get a lot of hail,” Neshem said, “then we sure as heck have no business doing it up here, where typically we have less than one day per year of one inch or larger hail. That’s what the long-term statistics show. So we’re fighting a Boogeyman.”

In reviewing hail loss insurance rates, he said Divide County, which has no weather modification, has seen its hail loss rate drop in half since 1978. Ward County’s rate has remained steady, he said. He added the weather modification program areas show a smaller increase in rainfall over the past 50 years than nonprogram counties.

Langerud said an NDSU study of hail insurance rates from 2008 to 2017 found Ward County tied for fourth lowest in the state. The study looked at claims paid versus crop value.

Langerud said rain enhancement remains a focus of North Dakota’s program. Studies have shown a 5% to 10% increase in rainfall, he said.

“The numbers show that, economically, rain enhancement provides three and a half to seven times more economic benefit than the hail suppression component,” he said.

Neshem said rainfall enhancement has become less important over the years.

“Farmers with their new increased conservation practices create more rainfall than weather modification ever has and we do it every year and it’s consistent and it’s scientifically proven,” Neshem said. “We’ve created essentially one to two inches of rainfall a year through our better conservation practices on the farm.”

Bomar said research in Texas found positive effects of cloud seeding both over seeded areas and downwind.

“What we found was the seeded storms not only lived 40% longer, not only did they generate a shaft of rain that covered an area 30% larger than storms that were not seeded, we found that the amount of rain produced at cloud base was 2.3 times the amount of rain that came from untreated storms. And the other really encouraging thing was the tops of seeded storms did not grow significantly taller than the nonseeded storms. What that said to us was, there’s no threat of seeding a storm to get additional rainwater out of it – that it’s going to grow into a monstrous thunderstorm that will produce pernicious products like damaging winds, large hail and even tornadoes,” he said.

Bomar said there’s no evidence that seeding a cloud can cause a delay in the release of rainfall.

“Once you see the cloud and you began to induce more of the cloud water to be converted into raindrops, you do change the dynamics of that cloud. It does behave differently. But, it behaves in a positive way – that is, more of that cloud water is extracted, or converted, into raindrops,” he said.

Bomar said hail suppression is believed to be occurring based on anecdotal information.

“Our focus is on getting additional rain into reservoirs and into streams that feed them, as well as getting additional groundwater,” he said. “But we also believe we’re having an effect on the occurrence of hail, even though we can’t document it like we would like.”

As for safety, Bomar said, a study found the amount of silver in rainwater from storms seeded with silver iodide was barely measurable. Other studies have reached similar results, including a recent study in Australia, he said.

“The amount that’s showing up in soil and in water is far below any possible threat to not only humans who might consume that water but even livestock,” he said.

A 2019 North Dakota State University study calculated the cost of weather modification at 40 cents per tilled acre or about 13 cents for all acres. The cost is about 11 cents for all acres in Ward County. The state share of the total acreage cost is about 4 cents, with the rest coming from county taxes.

Figures obtained by Friends of Weather Modification from county records show Ward County taxes collected for weather modification came to $2.5 million from 2006 to 2019. In the past five years, collections from taxes and interest on the money totalled $825,511. The addition of state spending increased total tax dollars in the program to about $1.1 million.

Opponents say taxpayers will spend nearly $2 million on weather modification over the next five years if the ballot measure passes. That figure reflects the group’s estimate of annual county spending beginning at $250,000, with inflationary increases each year. The starting amount, which is significantly more than last year’s county appropriation of $112,360, assumes the county commission will end cuts to the program made in recent years. The Ward County Weather Modification Board had requested $225,000 for 2020.

The $2 million figure presented by North Dakotans Against Weather Modification also includes state funding for the program. Currently, the state pays a third of program costs.

The weather modification budget statewide this year is just under $900,000, with about $300,000 coming from the state and $600,000 from six participating counties.

The county’s weather modification contract with the Atmospheric Resource Board expired in March and would restart if voters approve the program in June. It would be too late for cloud seeding for much of the summer, but the county commission has set money aside for some cloud seeding in 2020 before the program wraps up Sept. 1.

Neshem, who serves on the Ward County Weather Modification Board, said the program is out of touch with constituents, who have lost say in the program.

“It’s become all about the program and nothing about the results or the wants of the people,” he said. “It was meant to have input from a local level and then go up. Instead, it’s coming from the top and going down.”

The county board meets once a year to determine a budget and participates at a joint meeting of weather modification counties. Decisions on when to seed clouds during the season are made by pilots and meteorologists, with ongoing program guidance from a designated county weather modification board member and county commissioner from each participating county.