No evidence shows that human manipulation caused the deadly flash floods that engulfed the Texas Hill Country. Meteorologists say cloud seeding, a practice that stimulates rainfall over small areas, could not possibly create a deluge so severe that it can be expected only once every five centuries.
And yet, misinformation about the flood’s origin is spreading rapidly across social media.
“Fake weather. Fake hurricanes. Fake flooding. Fake. Fake. Fake,” Kandiss Taylor, a Republican congressional candidate from Georgia, wrote on X.
“This isn’t just ‘climate change,’” she added. “It’s cloud seeding, geoengineering, & manipulation. If fake weather causes real tragedy, that’s murder.”
The conspiracy theories – amplified by prominent figures such as Michael Flynn, a former national security adviser to President Donald Trump, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. – accumulated as hopes diminished of finding survivors of the flood that hit early Friday, July 4. Authorities have confirmed more than 100 deaths, including about two dozen children swept away from their summer camp.
‘This is not normal’
Across social media, conspiracy theorists have aimed their sights at one purported culprit for the flooding: Rainmaker Technology Corp., a California-based company that the state of Texas pays to seed clouds over arid agricultural regions and drinking water supplies. Rainmaker uses drones to drop silver iodide, a compound that bonds with water molecules, into specific clouds to make the moisture heavy enough to become precipitation. The company’s chief executive, August Doricko, has said the chemical has “negligible effects” on crops, livestock and humans but can boost rainfall amounts by as much as 20%.
Rainmaker’s most recent “seeding mission” in south-central Texas targeted two clouds on Wednesday, July 2, two days before the flooding, Doricko wrote on X.
“These clouds persisted for about two hours after seeding,” he wrote. “Natural clouds typically have lifespans of 30 minutes to a few hours at most, with even the most persistent storm systems rarely maintaining the same cloud structure for more than 12-18 hours. The clouds that were seeded on July 2nd dissipated over 24 hours prior to the development of the storm complex that would produce the flooding rainfall.”
Doricko’s explanation did not dissuade skeptics.
Several X users suggested the U.S. military was using cloud seeding to manipulate the weather. Others claimed billionaires like Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder, were involved. Still others spread antisemitic conspiracy theories that also blamed Rainmaker and its investors for the flooding in North Carolina caused by Hurricane Helene in 2024.
Greene, the Georgia congresswoman, said she had introduced legislation to ban cloud seeding.
“This is not normal,” she wrote on X. “I want clean air, clean skies, clean rain water, clean ground water, and sun shine just like God created it!! No person, company, entity, or government should ever be allowed to modify our weather by any means possible!!”
‘A matter of scale’
Meteorologists quickly debunked the conspiracy theories surrounding cloud seeding.
“Cloud seeding played ZERO role in deadly Texas floods,” Matthew Cappucci, the senior meteorologist at MyRadar Weather in Orlando, Florida, wrote on X. “Rudimentary, basic physics explains that. Cloud seeding entails adding condensation nuclei into the atmosphere to help clouds drop subtly more rain.”
Travis Herzog, the chief meteorologist for KTRK-TV in Houston, said cloud seeding “cannot create a storm of this size of this magnitude or size.”
“All it can do is take an existing cloud and enhance the rainfall by up to 20%,” Herzog wrote on Facebook. “It is physically impossible for that to have created this weather system. This is a matter of scale. If I blow out a candle with my breath, does that mean that I can then go blow out a raging wildfire? It is the same with cloud seeding.”
A more likely culprit for the severe flooding, scientists say, is climate change.
According to the National Climate Assessment, published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, climate change is estimated to have increased the rainfall from Hurricane Harvey, which flooded the Houston area in 2017, by 15 to 20%. A hotter atmosphere, the assessment concluded, is likely to cause more storms to drop more rain in the coming years.
Rainmaker, meanwhile, is dealing with potential threats. As misinformation spread, Doricko reported to X that his company’s address and a photo of its offices had been posted online, apparently by people who blamed Rainmaker for a disaster he says his company didn’t cause.
“The natural disaster in the Texan Hill Country is a tragedy,” Doricko said on X. “My prayers are with Texas.”
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Author: Ally Heath
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