The natural disaster in the Texan Hill Country is a tragedy. My prayers are with Texas.
Rainmaker did not operate in the affected area on the 3rd or 4th or contribute to the floods that occurred over the region.
Rainmaker will always be fully transparent.
A review of the timeline of events
Overnight from July 3rd - 4th, moisture surged into the Hill Country from the Pacific as remnants of Tropical Storm Barry moved across the region.
At 1:00 a.m. on July 4th, the National Weather Service (NWS), which we work closely with to maintain awareness of severe weather systems, issued a flash flood warning for San Angelo, Texas. Note, summer convective cloud seeding operations in Texas do not occur during overnight hours.
At 4:00 a.m. on July 4th, the NWS issued a life-threatening emergency warning, and flooding ensued.
Did Rainmaker conduct any operations that could have impacted the floods? No.
The last seeding mission prior to the July 4th event was during the early afternoon of July 2nd, when a brief cloud seeding mission was flown over the eastern portions of south-central Texas, and two clouds were seeded. These clouds persisted for about two hours after seeding before dissipating between 3:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. CDT. Natural clouds typically have lifespans of 30 minutes to a few hours at most, with even the most persistent storm systems rarely maintaining the same cloud structure for more than 12-18 hours. The clouds that were seeded on July 2nd dissipated over 24 hours prior to the developing storm complex that would produce the flooding rainfall.
A senior meteorologist observed an unusually high moisture content prior to the event's arrival, using NWS sounding data. It was at this point that our meteorologists determined that we would suspend future operations indefinitely. As you can see, we suspended operations on July 2nd, a day before the NWS issued any flood warning.
Here are the flight logs for July from our South Texas Program
To ensure safety and prevent any risk of flooding from cloud seeding, Rainmaker suspended operations in accordance with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulations suspension criteria, listed below
I encourage the meteorology community to ask questions and scrutinize our claims, and we will continue to be fully transparent in answering.
Attached is a meteorological report on the events.
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