Eli5 Why can’t we just create rain clouds for the western half of the U.S. that is going through a drought?

Question

I’ve heard of the term cloud seeding. Why can’t we create rain clouds and position them in the parts of the US that are going through droughts? It’s not like the water is disappearing from earth, it’s just displacing in other parts of the world

In: 10

Answer 1

You still need to get the water from somewhere. If you are having to bring water in from somewhere else, you might as well take it directly to where you need rather than spend a lot of effort to get it into the air, and hope that most of it falls back down where you need.