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

If we could, we would. Being able to make it rain anywhere we want, whenever we want would be like a holy grail achievement of science.

Cloud seeding has been attempted for 100 years or more, and there is still no scientific consensus on whether it works or not. A lot of scientists are of the opinion that cloud seeding produces negligible or no results.