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

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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

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Anonymous 0 Comments

>I’ve heard of the term cloud seeding. Why can’t we create rain clouds

Cloud seeding doesn’t make clouds. It makes rain fall *from* clouds. For cloud seeding to work, **all the water has to be in the air already**, usually as clouds (but clouds that weren’t going to rain on that location). Then when you “seed” those clouds, you’re helping the water *that’s already up there* to condense into drops and fall as rain.

That doesn’t help when you have droughts creating state-sized regions where there’s minimal humidity in the air and no clouds to seed rain from.

Anonymous 0 Comments

TL;DR: “Cloud seeding” should actually be called “rain seeding” because various technologies cause existing clouds to rain. They don’t actually create the clouds.
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