Rain dance in the sky.

thought you may find this intresting?.....its intresting from my point of view..(and worrying)..because i live in portugal!.....after the terrible fires over the last 2 years...if we dont get rain soon and the fires start due to even drier conditions than last year were going to be in real trouble!

Scientists from Lisbons Lusophone university have joined forces with the portuguese air force to end the worst drought in Portugal for decades.
Following the driest january and February for one hundread years,authorities have declared parts of southern and central portugal under 'extreme drought'.
The attempt to induce the clouds to release rain was made last week,focousing on the areas of Castelo Branco,Coimbra and Evora.
The rain enhancement technology used in the experiment was a combination of silver iodine and pottasium chlorate.In theory this compound should build up moisture in clouds causing percipitation.A Portuguese air force plane flew above moisture-laden clouds to deposit the chemical composition in the hope of fostering rain.Mean while,the experiment was monitored at Portugals Meterology Institute.
The pilot of the Hercules C130 said the same technique employed in August last year had posotive results so the team was hopeful it would succeed again.Unfortunatley no considerable amount of rain was registered following this flight time.

well...its looking even worse today.....with the algarve region being predominatley tourism based and that being mainly golf courses...town officials are saying that irrigation will now be stopped on these courses!!...well very shortly we are going to be getting a shed load of sun and this is going to dry up the golf courses.....i cant imagine golfers wishing to pay the expensive course fee's to play on a burnt patch of dried out yellow weeds?
This is going to be a severe blow to the algarve and portugal in general...what a shame.

Seeding rain clouds is a horribly bad idea. The simple fact of the matter is, weather patterns are shifting (as they have for year after year). There is nothing we can do to stop it. Yes it's horribly unfortunate for those in the areas being adversly affected, but you can't really control it, short of controlling the climate, and we're not even sure we can do that.

Osiris

I totally agree with you dude......but if youd seen the fires here first hand a few yaers ago you would have been shocked at the amount of forest that was lost...the shear amount of damage caused was immense......total devestation....if it gets that dry again this year we wont even have any water in the resevoirs to try and put the fires out!

Portugal isn't the only place drying up, unfortunately it's happening in many places in America despite the record amount of precipitation we've seen in some places. The problem is, when it's this wet during the winter, and spring comes early, most of the water runs off into the sea before the really warm weather starts.

California is bracing for the worst fire season they've ever predicted. It should prove to be a challenge to contain the fires because this moisture is prompting growth, and will be gone by the time summer hits, so the underbrush will dry and leave behind acres and acres of kindling.

I imagine Portugal will have similar problems...

I sympathize with the problem facing the Portugese, but I have to agree that cloud seeding probably won't do enough to counter the wild weather and unpredictable climate shift we're witnessing.

The technology is proven, but due to the butterfly effect, nobody can say what the side effects of such activity might be. In other words, making it rain a little more in Portugal might dry out another area and cause more problems...

I do sympathize though, I lived in California a few years back, and I know how miserable a dry spell can be.

well..its been raining a bit these past few days but weather its going to make a difference is yet to be seen..(pun not intended).