HELENA — It’s no secret that Montana is often plagued by drought, but there may be a new way to combat it: cloud seeding.
“Because cloud seeding is new in Montana, people are wary," Michael Downey, the drought program coordinator for the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, said. "What is this thing, and what are we putting into the air?”
Watch to see how Montana is looking into cloud seeding:
The Montana DNRC, alongside Montana Tech and the National Center for Atmospheric Research at the University of Colorado Boulder, recently completed a wintertime cloud seeding feasibility study that aims to enhance mountain snowpack in southwest Montana.
“Really, what we are doing is trying to identify those times during the winter when the conditions are right, there is enough moisture in the air to start snowing, but it lacks that one ingredient," Downey says.
That one ingredient needed for precipitation is silver iodide. Cloud seeding is the process of manually adding silver iodide into clouds from either the ground or through aircraft.
“It is complicated from socially and technically, and it's costly, so I think that cloud seeding has emerged as a tool to maybe create some more moisture, which is pretty difficult to do, and it is not quite as costly,” said Downey.
On average, cloud seeding can cost around $1 million a year.
It’s a technique that’s been used for over sixty years to increase water availability by anywhere from 10% to 15%.
Montana is one of just a handful of western states that don’t practice cloud seeding. Surrounding states like North Dakota, Wyoming, and Utah have been doing it for years. Idaho claims it has generated about 1.24 million acre-feet of water over the past 20 years.
“This is not new, this really first started in the fifties, going strong by the sixties, and by the seventies, and has been going on in the western U.S. since then," Downey says.
In 2023, the Montana state legislature appropriated funds in House Bill 2, requiring DNRC to complete the feasibility study, and now that the study is finished, cloud seeding is headed from the Big Hole back to the Capitol as the DNRC feels the legislature will need to commit to ongoing funding.
“I think the results are promising enough that the next step to see if this is going to work in Montana is to do a pilot study in three to five years,” said Downey.
The study estimates potential increases in stream flow of between 20,000 and 60,000 feet in the Big Hole Watershed, depending on the program design and seasonal conditions. Estimated costs to implement the program vary from $12 to $60 per acre-foot.
