here is a cool pic i took

[mnalpha]

http://www.imagehosting.us/himages/ihnp-143598.jpg

Took that pic in Kansas flying weather mod back in 99, F-3
It flattend a farm

 

[minitour]

HOLY SH!T!!!

I hope you signed your rental agreement!!!

-mini

 

[Typhoon1244]

What type airplane is that?

 

[mnalpha]

Piper Comanche 250, with silver iodide generators on the tips

 

[Best on a Camel]

What are silver iodide generators used for?

 

[OrphicSeth]

oh that is very very kicka ss!

 

[mnalpha]

When you burn it, it releases microscopic sized particles that get sucked up into the storm (you fly in the updrafts) and hail forms around these particles. The idea is to produce lots of little hail instead of a bunch of big hail. This is supposed to reduce crop damage. That’s the real simple version. We were just told what storm to seed, and when to turn the generators on and off. Here is a pic of one of the generators burning.

http://www.imagehosting.us/imagehosting/showimg.jpg/?id=143657[size=-1]

[/size]

 

[OrphicSeth]

Does it work? and Is the gig as fun as it looks/sounds?

 

[414Flyer]

What are silver iodide generators used for?

For generating silver iodide

I dont have anything that cool from my WxMod flying. Just photos of lots of icing, I did get a lightning strike in a Cheyenne II this last fall.

 

[snow-back]

I had a "static discharge" come out the top of the radome on a C-340 at about midnight one night in Western Turkey. It was kind of hypnotic...a blue swirly St. Elmo's type vortex on top of the radome just twirling around for a minute or so then BAM! I'm glad the autopilot was on, 'cause I couldn't see for about 5 minutes. I miss those days. Sigh.

 

[mnalpha]

Does it work? and Is the gig as fun as it looks/sounds?

I think it worked sometimes, but at other times I got the feeling that we were making the storm worse. Messing with nature can go either way. It was fun at times, but i almost shiat myself in a bad way a couple times. What is a good way to shiat yourself anyways?

 

[Vik]

See the "Diarreah in a freighter" thread in the Cargo forum

I think it worked sometimes, but at other times I got the feeling that we were making the storm worse. Messing with nature can go either way. It was fun at times, but i almost shiat myself in a bad way a couple times. What is a good way to shiat yourself anyways?

 

[DJS]

Does it work?

Does it work? and Is the gig as fun as it looks/sounds?

Let's see. A typical supercell capable of damaging hail and/or tornadoes has as much energy as a 2-3 megaton (not kilo, mega) nuclear explosion. (Here's one reference, there are many more out there: http://science.howstuffworks.com/tornado2.htm)

In a supercell, the amount of dust particles of all shapes and sizes is astounding. It moves stunning quantities of air (and hence billions and billions of particles of dirt and dust and barns and cows and trees) in ways that are hard to fathom.

Now, explain how spraying a few million particles of anything will have any noticable affect on any aspect of the supercell system.

I think it worked sometimes, but at other times I got the feeling that we were making the storm worse.

Another way of looking at this might be that the storm did whatever it was going to do regardless of a (relatively) few additional silver iodide particles introduced into the system.

 

[414Flyer]

Well the particle act as artificial ice crystals, and when introduced into SCLW droplets, can speed up the process in which those turn to ice crystals themselves, and then a result is release of latent heat, which in a way is more fuel for the storm too.

its a situation where if it is done correctly and at the right time, can theoretically cause 10 precent more rainfall.

Does it work? Well to know 100 percent sure, you would have to have a time machine, and have the same storm to seed and compared it to if you dont.

 

[DJS]

Well the particle act as artificial ice crystals, and when introduced into SCLW droplets, can speed up the process in which those turn to ice crystals themselves, and then a result is release of latent heat, which in a way is more fuel for the storm too.

its a situation where if it is done correctly and at the right time, can theoretically cause 10 precent more rainfall.

Does it work? Well to know 100 percent sure, you would have to have a time machine, and have the same storm to seed and compared it to if you dont.

I understand the theory, and if we were talking about a great many thousand tons of silver iodide, I might buy it.

But when compared to the many, many millions tons of dust, soot, hyrdocarbons and who-knows-what-else in a supercell that is already obtaining and releasing heat at a rate nearly impossible for the human mind to grok, coelescing and expelling billions of tons of heated, cooled, super-cooled and frozen H2O, the entire system one of the most supremely chaotic things on the planet, all of this driven by a mechanism which contains as much energy as hundreds of the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima...

...and here you're going to release, what, a couple hundred pounds of something and expect that to do...anything?

I love technology and all. I'm amazed at what we humans can do. I wouldn't at all be suprised if some day we can control the weather. But a few pounds of silver iodide (or anything else short of plutonium just as it reaches critical mass), even applied at "just the right time" (heh), simply isn't going to alter a supercell's future in any measurable way any more than doing a rain dance.

 

[414Flyer]

Well also supercells are not the typical target of seeding. Its weaker convective storms, that you might be able to give a small kick to and get a bit more water out of it. Obviously with supercells, there is not gonna be any need to get more water out of those

 

[rfeathe1]

What are silver iodide generators used for?

They make rain.

 

[ultrarunner]

http://www.imagehosting.us/himages/ihnp-143598.jpg

Took that pic in Kansas flying weather mod back in 99, F-3
It flattend a farm

Well it's a good thing they are flat out there to begin with.