Conspiracy theorists are blaming flash floods on cloud seeding — it has to stop

As The Verge's resident disaster writer, I'm tired of this nonsense. So let's just get into it.

What is cloud seeding?

Cloud seeding is basically an attempt to make precipitation fall from clouds. It targets clouds that have water droplets that are essentially too light to fall. Scientists at MIT learned in the 1940s that if you inject a mineral into the cloud that's similar to the crystalline structure of ice - typically silver iodide or salt - those small water droplets start to freeze to the mineral. This creates heavier ice particles that can eventually fall down to the ground. These days, researchers can use radar and satellite image …

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