Weather watch: A forecast on weather modification legislation

Cloud seeding and hail suppression sound great until you learn how the unintended consequences impact people who are not part of the program.

In this episode of Straight Talk, your host, Emmery Mehlhoff talks with Representative Matthew Ruby of Minot, representing District 40.

Rep. Ruby shares his concerns about weather modification and why he is sponsoring HB 1166 in the North Dakota 68th Legislative Assembly. The bill would scale back county cloud seeding efforts when nearing the border of a non-participating county.

NDFB has policy against state funding for weather modification programs and stands opposed to weather modficiation. (Under Section 500 in Fiscal Policy)

Emmery also speaks with Roger Neshem, a Berthold farmer who is also a self-confessed weather geek and understands the intricacies of weather modification. While Roger's grandfather helped organize the weather modification program many years ago in Ward County, Roger says he stepped away when he realized it was not living up to expectations.

Contact Rep. Ruby: mruby@ndlegis.gov

Contact Roger Neshem: 701-720-7454

Contact Emmery Mehlhoff: emmery@ndfb.org

Sign up for NDFB's Legislative Front (scroll to bottom of page).

Transcript

[Straight Talk theme music]

[00:12] Emmery Mehlhoff: Welcome to Straight talk with NDFB. This is your host, Emmery Mehlhoff. In today's episode, I visit with Representative Matt Ruby from Minot, North Dakota. Representative Ruby is a staff sergeant with the National Guard, and has been in the House of Representatives since 2017. Representative Ruby has introduced a bill to put some rules on how weather modification works in North Dakota. Join us for our conversation.
 
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Emmery: Today, I have Representative Matt Ruby, and we're going to be talking weather modification. How are you, Representative Ruby?

[00:48] Rep. Matt Ruby: I'm doing very well. How about yourself?

[00:51] Emmery: I'm doing good. Hey, before we start our conversation here, can you tell us about yourself, about your district and how long you've been in the Legislature?

[01:02] Rep. Ruby: Yeah, so I represent District 40, which is the north part of Minot. And then we go almost to Upham almost to Glenburn up in the so we got a lot of rural area, and then we have half the base. I got elected in 2016, so this is end of my second session. I've served on Energy and Natural Resources for all four of my sessions, and my first session for a committee was Education, and then I've been on Human Services for three sessions, and now the vice chair of that. Yeah, kind of followed my dad around in his early career. He got elected in 2001, and I just fell in love with the process and jumped in as soon as I had a chance.

[01:41] Emmery: Yeah. Your dad, Dan Ruby, has been around for quite a while. How many years is he going on now? Is it 20?

[01:48] Rep. Ruby: Yeah, I think he's just over 20 now. He always says that he would have stepped out sooner had I not got elected when I did. It's been so much fun. We've always been close, but being able to bounce ideas off. And this year we've had a couple of people say that if they're in doubt on something, that they think it's going to be more of a conservative issues, but they're a little in doubt, they look to see where the Rubys are and still, they follow us. But there's been a few days where we've just been opposite on certain things. And so it's kind of funny. I've always tried to get my vote in early so people don't think I'm following him on everything. He doesn't want to parrot and he told me early on that, just don't follow me on everything. I got to think for myself. It's been a lot of fun.

[02:34] Emmery: Well, both you and Representative Dan Ruby have been friends of Farm Bureau for a long time and really have enjoyed working with both of you. I have seen both of you vote and you're both very conservative. But it's interesting to watch how you guys differ on some issues sometimes. And it's interesting how and it's good to see that to see individual, really strong conservatives in the Legislature who are able to show both sides of conservatism and able to show, okay, here's how even good conservatives can differ on an issue. And so, no, I think you guys are a perfect example of that. Well, let's dive into talking about weather modification. So North Dakota Farm Bureau has policy in opposition to weather modification. You have a bill relating to that topic and that policy. So why don't you just tell us about the bill and where it got started.

[03:32] Rep. Ruby: Yeah, so it's a House bill, 1166. It originated from one of my constituents. Two years back, Ward County had passed a resolution to not fund weather modification in our county and it passed with like 85% of the vote. So it was overwhelming. And I don't know if so many people fully understood it, but even kind of on the floor. The gist of the feelings I've gotten when this passed the House was that they might not understand it, they might don't really want to get into weeds with it, but it's just whether or not we should even be messing with Mother Nature. And that's kind of been my approach to it. I don't know the ins and outs of it. I do have a good friend that is really knowledgeable on this that is just in absolute opposition to the hail suppression portion of it, mostly. 

So what kind of fueled the bill, though, is that to the west of us we have counties that still do weather modification and you'll see them spray right up to the county line and we still get the effect. You can pretty much track storms coming in from Montana. You can watch the airplane tracker and the sprayers go up and right as it's about to get over our area where we're supposed to get a good soaking, dissipates. And if it comes from the southeast, which isn't often, but you can watch the storm come all the way up from the southeast part of the state and then we get rain. And so there was some frustration with that. And so the initial version of the bill was, well, if the county is going to do something that put something up into the atmosphere that is going to affect a storm and have this residual effect on counties and areas downwind from them. Then there should be some oversight or at least some input from those counties that are still going to be affected. 

And so we put in where before the state puts any money, the county could put in whatever they want. But before the state was going to put any money, they needed to check with the counties surrounding the requesting county. And there was some issues that were arose about whether or not they could tell them where one county could tell another county what they can and can't do. And we really tried to really hit that. Listen, we don't agree with it. We understand that some do. And that's why we're not trying to kill this program. But there should be some oversight. And really what we came down to with working with the department and those against it. And the Department of Water Resources, they really want to maintain the program or at least the assets, and not kill the program. So what we did is we took away the state share. We amended the bill. We took away the state share. It's about two thirds funded locally and one third from the state. And so that state portion is gone. We required that there is a setback from where they spray from. It's a two township setback from a county that is non participating. So if the county to the right of you or to the east of you does not participate or have a weather modification program, then you have to stop spraying two townships over. And then we required that right now, the programs just get reauthorized by the accounting commission every five years. And so what we did is we just put it on the ballot. Right now, it says every five years. We're looking at going every four years. That way it stays in even number year, and it goes on the general election every year. That's where we're at with it right now. It sailed through the House pretty well. There was some opposition from two legislators that were in the area that their counties do cloud seed. I don't know. I'd have to look and figure out if they're doing the hail suppression or if it's rain enhancement. There's a couple of different options that they have. Overall, it went through the House well, and we have our Senate hearing on Thursday.

[07:08] Emmery: Okay, let's dive a little bit into what weather modification is. So the two types I'm aware of is the cloud seeding and hail suppression. But to be honest with you, I really can't tell you how either of them work. So could you tell us a little bit about what weather modification is and how widespread it is across the state?

[07:27] Rep. Ruby: Yeah, I'm not going to pretend to know the science. I want to say it's about three different options, and I could be wrong in that I'd have to go back and look at some of the testimony because there was a lot of good information about how it works and all that. Just not my world. I don't understand at all. I want to say there's seven counties in North Dakota. No excuse me, I think it's four counties that participate. So it's a really small minority that actually do it. And most of it is along the Montana border and in that southern part of the state.

[08:00] Emmery: The dry areas.

[08:02] Rep. Ruby: Very dry. Yeah. One of the issues that was brought up on the floor is that in some of those areas, they struggle to find crop insurance because of I don't know if it's how dry it is or if they were getting just pummeled with hailstorms. I'm not exactly certain where that came from and that's why they do it, which is why we didn't come up with an all out ban, which I had a couple of people recommending. But I guess I think it just shouldn't fall back on that local control where if they feel that they want to do it and they want to fund it, then they can. And we actually left the infrastructure on the state side so they can contract with the state. So the state still owns all the planes. They have an internship for pilots that they can maintain and they just get contracted. Instead of that being a part of their share, it'll be contracted by the county. And if they want to do that, then so be it. I don't agree with it, but that's got to be local.

[09:00] Emmery: That makes sense. So can you tell me just about how the weather modification works?

[09:05] Rep. Ruby: It's a really high level, so essentially I don't know if it's when the storm is building and there's a certain point in the storm that they go up and they spray a certain chemical, depending on what they want to do into that system, and then that becomes a part of that storm forming. And you can have hail suppression that either reduces the size or is supposed to get rid of hail. You've got enhanced rainfall and I don't think it's necessarily duration, it might just be I think it's volume. It just dumps more in that same amount of time. My very again, high level understanding of it is there is certain things that you can do where if you need the storm to not start raining until halfway through your county or your area, you can do certain things to do that because there's not a lot of you're not expanding how long it rains. You can delay the start time of the rain and things like that. It can get pretty technical. Like I said, it's just not my world and Ward (County) doesn't do it anymore. So I really don't have a lot of detail, much more than that. Roger Neshem is the gentleman, a good friend of mine that knows the ins and outs of it and he's got specified on the House side and he'll be here on Thursday too, to get some understanding of it. He's the ins and outs guy and he's had this in committee. His grandpa was one of the ones that helped start this modification program in Ward County and now he was instrumental in killing it and it made a lot of sense on paper and the actual application and how it was actually affecting Ward. It didn't justify it and so it went down the dump.

[10:48] Emmery: And I think it's interesting you talk about the local control aspect of it and you look at the potential community effects. And so I think it's interesting you're talking about they have to cease the sprain or the modification work that they're doing two townships away from the county line. Can you tell us a little bit about what the effects could be on those neighboring counties from the weather modification occurring in a different county?

[11:17] Rep. Ruby: Yeah, like I said, you can kind of control when that rain drops. And so if it's going to be something that if you're watching when the storm first starts and kind of predictors on the weather websites or online, you can kind of see where it's supposed to hit over a certain area and is what happens when they go up and they start spraying for whatever one, that either dumps sooner and then so it kind of ends the storm faster as it's getting over where it initially would have if it had just been on its own. And so that's really the one that we see a lot in Ward County. As far as the hail suppression, we had a little bit of that. I don't know what percentage of our program did hail suppression, but it was supposed to be lessening the hailstorms and since we stopped it, we haven't had a hailstorm. So it's kind of the same thing. It really didn't justify it, I guess. I don't think we were still getting certain areas were getting pummeled with hail and we're spending all this money to prevent that and we didn't see that. Honestly, if you actually do get a chance to talk to Roger, he'll tell you that even based on the return that the insurance industry will say, it really doesn't make sense to spend all this money on hail suppression, but there is a better return on that investment for the rain enhancement. And so, yeah, as far as the effects from what one county does to the other, it's moving where that rain is going to drop. And I'm not going to say that that's a blame for drought or anything like that. That's obviously a lot bigger scale situation. But certainly in situations in areas that especially big areas that are experiencing some sort of drought, when that little bit of rain that they're supposed to get doesn't come, then you see even bigger. So it's just kind of a pile on effect, I think, for some of these farmers.

[13:10] Emmery: And this is why people in agriculture are strong on either side of it. It might come down to your philosophy a little bit and what you think about. Obviously some people get really excited about different technologies and how that can help agriculture, and then other people see it as, oh, hey, weather has always been God's deal and He sends rain when He wants and He keeps it away when He wants. It's interesting to see really good agriculturalists on either side of this issue. But North Dakota Farm Bureau members, the majority of them being concerned that when we start interfering with the weather or we start trying to manipulate it, that it will have unintended consequences. It might not be as drastic as causing drought and death of cattle or anything like that, but just is it going to prevent rain here? Is it going to bring rain there? How is that going to affect it?

[14:05] Rep. Ruby: It's almost kind of a kick them when they're down. In some instances where, like I said, you're expecting you're in the middle of a drought, you're not expecting a whole lot. And when you are supposed to get that little bit, that might just keep you holding on, and it's not there, it's a lot. And from a legislative perspective, especially somebody that isn't, and this isn't my world, I think the science is pretty split on it. And when the science is split, then you have to justify another way. And that's where I fall back on what you just said. God's going to give rain and He's going to hold rain. Should we mess with Mother Nature? If the science was without a doubt, this is beneficial, I would say, yeah, maybe we do. There's technology there. We could do it. But it's so split. And like I said, the verdict is out. Nobody's got a sound science, and it's such a hard one to do because to even do a study, you'd have to have so many of these factors to line up enough. When you're dealing with atmospheric stuff, the pressure and the temperature and wind and all these different things, it's impossible to get a legitimate study to have this sound science. And until that happens, I'm going to default that we shouldn't mess with Mother Nature.

[15:20] Emmery: Well, thank you so much, Representative Ruby, and I really appreciate the work that you are doing in the North Dakota legislature to represent constituents first and foremost, but to represent conservatism and to be an advocate for agriculture and for our sportsmen in North Dakota. So thank you again.

[15:41] Rep. Ruby: It's my pleasure. I appreciate you having me on.

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[15:46] Emmery: I also visit with Roger Neshem, whose grandfather first brought weather modification to Ward County. Roger visits with me about some of the issues that they had in Ward County with weather modification and how the county eventually decided to discontinue the weather modification program. 

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[16:04] Emmery: Well, welcome, Roger. I got your information from Representative Ruby, and he said that you were the guy to talk to about all of the science and details behind how weather modification works. Why don't you just go ahead and introduce yourself and tell us about your experience with weather modification, and then we'll get going on the science of it all.

[16:30] Roger Neshem: Okay, well, there's science details and then there's bureaucracies, which is a huge part of it, too. But my name is Roger Nashem. I farm up by Berthold, North Dakota, with my wife Jennifer. We've got two young girls, and I've always been a weather geek, and I've always paid attention. I'm 44 years old now, but I was 13 years old, and I had a camcorder on my shoulder and storm chased and stuff, and my grandpa actually helped originally getting weather modification going here. And after they had seen results of it a few years, they were against it. Yeah, he was way back then. Because, see, originally how this stuff all got started was it started off they were going to increase rainfall 25%, and who wouldn't be for that, especially in this part of the state? And then it kind of morphed into a hail suppression thing, and then that's where it's laid off. And even today, well, I'll keep going on that. So then my grandpa left the board. This is back, I think in the '80s or even earlier than that. And anyways, I had finally got fed up with the weather modification program up here, and I decided to do something. I interviewed and actually got on the board, on the Weather Modification Authority Board in Ward County. And I got there and started asking questions. And everybody had deer in the headlight looks. And our first meeting was in a restaurant in Minot. And by the time we had, I think our third meeting with me as part of the board, we were filling up entire halls and people were asking questions. And naturally, the weather authority board didn't want to listen to anybody, and they're just going to hammer down and keep doing weather modification because at the time, Ward County, North Dakota, was actually the longest continuously operated hail suppression program in the world. 

Anyways, on the weather authority board, we had another gentleman had joined the board then too, who was against weather modification. And we were trying to talk to other three members who had all been on this board for 20 plus years. Like, hey, when we're in times of a severe drought, can we at least just suspend the operations? And the Ward County Commission actually voted five to nothing to suspend operations totally in '17 until the drought was over. But then somebody went and actually read the statute that created the weather mod authority. And turns out nobody has authority over the weather mod authority except the weather mod authority themselves. So anyways, the planes literally left Minot, and then they flew back the next day because somebody picked up the statute and took a look. We never had a meeting. We continued on with the program. Some of the budget funding got cut a little bit in Ward County, but they never cut it all the way. And eventually the county commission decided to just put it to a general election vote. And we won that vote nine to one. We absolutely crushed them in the 2020 election, and it's been gone ever since. 

And now Representative Ruby introduced a bill to try to pull back a little bit on weather mod. And I guess we're in that process right now. But there at one point in time was 38 counties doing weather modification in North Dakota. That number is down to four today. At no point in the history of North Dakota weather modification has a county ever left and came back. And then, to put it even further, how extreme and just really what a waste of money it is for us, let alone if it's harming us. There are only four counties in the entire United States who do hail suppression as their main form of weather modification, and they're all four here in North Dakota.

[20:23] Emmery: So let's talk a little bit about what weather modification is. Can you tell us about how it works, what the science is behind it, and at least what it attempts to do?

[20:33] Roger: The theory behind it is they introduce nuclei, which is made of burning silver iodide. So you have these micro particles that they inject in the updraft of a storm. And the thought is, you have over-competition in the storm. Inside storms, there's something called supercooled water, which is water that is not in a frozen state, that is sub 32 degrees. And what happens is this water starts to collect in, though, as it drops, and it forms hailstorms. It works its way around in the cloud and forms hailstones eventually, and they drop, but they obviously melt some as they drop to the ground. Well, the theory behind hail suppression is if they introduce silver iodide into the cloud, they're going to have more embryos for which that supercooled water will attach to. So that instead of having, just for complete example sake here, say instead of having a hailstone the size of a bowling ball, you injected a bunch of embryos there for that supercooled water to attach to. So instead of having a bowling ball, you've cut it into 100 pieces, and it's all the size of marbles. Okay? So then the theory is that by the time it hits the ground, it'll be melted. That is what is attempted. The first studies done on this in the '70s in northeast Colorado, they were going to do a five year study on it. They quit after three because all their hail suppression efforts actually led to increased hail. And I've always used the example in Ward County. Ward county had a higher hail loss ratio than all the counties around us that were not conducting hail suppression. We were 20% to 30% higher.

[22:13] Emmery: So how does the cloud seeding part work for the rain enhancement?

[22:18] Roger: This is where we get highly technical. But if you're conducting hail suppression, of which in a typical year, the North Dakota Weather Modification Program, they spend about 80% of their time doing hail suppression and the rest of the time doing rain enhancement. The difference between the two is, on the planes, they have two burners to burn silver iodide. Rain enhancement involves turning on one burner. Hail suppression involves turning on two. So they overseed it with two burners on. And you can actually read in their insurance study that really got this thing going into hyperdrive like it has been. They say they'll create early rain out, which means just I always use the example: Just imagine you've got a ten mile stretch with no weather modification. It's going to start raining at mile marker zero and that storm is going to continue through mile marker ten. What they claim they do is they make it rain sooner. So therefore now you have moved the precipitation further, like just say west because everything comes west east in general. So now instead of starting at mile marker zero, you're starting at mile marker negative two. But now it quits raining at mile marker eight. There's nothing they can do to make a storm last longer. So therefore the guys that live from mile marker eight through ten got shorted on their moisture. Hail suppression makes for early rain out. Using their own words from their own study, if they make it rain sooner, it therefore stops raining sooner. So the people that would have received moisture don't receive moisture at the end of that storm because they made it rain sooner. 

The thing about weather modification is just because you have a county line in place or a township line, what they do in those clouds doesn't just stop right then and there when they turn the switch off in the plane. If you look on the Water Commission's page, I know it was up there before, but they talk about, they've studied the effects of weather modification hundreds of miles downstream. Because there's stuff still left in the clouds. They can't simply turn it off. They'll say it takes 20 to 30 minutes for it to take hold. But that stuff is still acting in the cloud. You've changed the cloud dynamics because they will tell you also it does weaken a thunderstorm. You can watch them when they start seeding. You'll actually see the cloud tops decrease, it gets smaller, the storm weakens. And that's why I am 1000% for property rights. But as soon as you cross the line onto my property and affect me, that's where we have problems. And that is the whole problem with this program. You cannot simply turn it off and on and keep it within boundaries. Everybody's got their own way they want to farm, it's perfectly fine. You can be a GMO person, you can be an organic person, you can do whatever you want. You have a choice to do that. In this program, we don't have a choice to be unaffected by weather modification because I live downwind of a county doing it now. I mean we used to do it here in Ward County, now we quit. But I actually sit inside their buffer zone so they can seed still on Ward County because it's close enough to the seeding counties.

[25:33] Emmery: Well, thanks so much Roger, for visiting with me today and talking about weather modification and a little bit about the science behind it.

[25:41] Roger: Hey, thank you. I hope it brought some clarity but I know it's a big topic. So thank you.

[25:46] Emmery: Thanks, Roger. We'll talk again.

[25:48] Roger: Thank you.

[Straight Talk stinger]

[25:53] Emmery: You've been listening to Straight Talk with NDFB. To find out more about legislation NDFB is tracking during this legislative session, visit us at ndfb.org and subscribe to our Legislative Front and action alerts.

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