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

right now, cloud seeding is still a new technology, and it’s effectiveness is debated. it also costs a lot of money since it requires a lot of plane hours to seed clouds. you also need clouds to seed them, it’s not possible to create clouds from no where. it only works in very specific situations and the amount of “extra” rain created is considered to be negligible.