Thread by @CrimeADay

The federal government actually has a history of trying to change the weather by blowing stuff up in the sky.

On February 27, 1891, Robert Dyrenforth was appointed "Special Agent of the Department of Agriculture for Making Experiments in the Production of Rainfall."

That was only after a Confederate general had already patented exploding balloons as a means for making it rain.

But, the feds hired Dyrenforth (not a scientist) to go start blowing stuff up. They gave him $9,000. And he issued a pretty comprehensive report:

He used exploding balloons and even kites with dynamite attached.

People wrote letters begging him to stop:

When none of that seemed to work, he started blowing up prairie dog and badger holes because... well... because:

Eventually, the government stopped pursuing the bomb-kite strategy and moved on to other means of weather modification. In fiscal year 1966, the federal government was spending about $7 million on weather modification efforts.

Reports submitted to Congress also noted the efforts of *other* countries:

But then, in 1972, the New York Times reported on a secret cloud seeding program conducted by the United States to cause rainfall over Vietnam and Laos: nytimes.com/1972/07/03/arc…

The program was first revealed with the release of the Pentagon papers. That same year, Congress passed a new statute requiring the reporting of weather modification activities.

Then, in 1977, the United States entered into a multilateral convention to prohibit military use of weather modification techniques.