WMH Timeline

In December 1949 Krick suggested cloud seeding without resorting to airborne devices; his proposal employed ground-based smoke generators dispersing vaporized silver iodide. A single smoke dispenser set, asserted Krick, could be moved by two wheelbarrows; it theoretically provided cloud-seeding particles for an area of 240 square miles (620 km2). Tests demonstrated a fourfold increase in precipitation. By 1951 his cloud-seeding business had 120 employees and had been hired to seed clouds over 330 million acres (1,300,000 km2) in the western United States as well as parts of Mexico and San Salvador.