Cloud Tales

Adventures in Scientific Cloud Seeding

By: Larry Vardiman

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Starbuck is a Rainmaker, not Coffee. A rainmaker with the name of Starbuck in a movie from the '50s starring Burt Lancaster and Katherine Hepburn arrives in a small western town and, for a fee, offers to end a drought that's plaguing the ranchers and farmers. He offers to seed the clouds with his secret chemicals. Starbuck is a bigger than life figure who promises, "Rain in buckets, rain in barrels, rain in the lowlands, flood in the gullies, and the land will be as green as the Valley of Adam." Starbuck, a swindler and charlatan, eventually brings rain to the parched land and hope to a local maiden and her family whose dreams had dried up. Cloud Tales is a story of modern rainmakers, including yours truly, in the '50s to the '80s who applied scientific methods to seeding clouds and fog, rather than magical potions and incantations. Our efforts to assist clouds release their load of rain or snow at the right time and place, were extremely challenging and fascinating. Come inside the clouds with us and see how hard it is to squeeze moisture from them.