Town Of Reutlingen Votes To Attempt Bad-Weather-Taming…In Bid To Reduce Hail Size, Storm Damage

Here’s the weather craziness of the week story.

Officials of the German town of Reutlingen have voted to allocate 50,000 euros in a bid to tame the bad weather that typically occurs during thunderstorms. The plan is to hire an airplane to spray silver iodide into storm clouds with the hopes of reducing the size of hail, and so reduce property damage on the ground.

Hat tip meteorologist Jörg Kachelmann at Twitter.

The Reutlinger General-Anzeiger writes:

Exactly one year since the devastating hailstorm over Reutlingen, local politicians indeed want to support the use of a hail plane. On Monday evening the county council voted by a wide majority to allocate 50,000 euros for this, a spokeswoman said.”

They actually believe this is going to work!

In response, high-profile Swiss meteorologist Jörg Kachelmann writes at Twitter: “Now it’s out: Germany’s dumbest politicians are located in the Reutlingen legislature.”

Mr. Kachelmann has written before on the topic of using the bright yellow “weather-making” chemical, claiming that the method has a very low success rate and that certain conditions have to be right on the borderline for it to work. Overall Kachelmann characterizes the practice as “nonsense”.

Kachelmann also notes with sarcasm that the process seems to work especially after weathermen have already forecast the desired effect is going to take place anyway. Wow, the hailstones were pretty small this time. The silver iodide spraying worked!

I’ve also inquired with veteran meteorologist Klaus-Eckart Puls of the European institute of Climate and Energy (EIKE). He also agrees that the spraying is nonsense, writing that “over the decades there have been serious! attempts time and again and entire projects devoted to this. All of them failed and were stopped.”

Citizens demanding politicians do something about the bad weather

Not only might the dumbest politicians be found in Reutlingen, but also the dumbest citizens, too. The Reutlinger General-Anzeige writes:

Lately in Reutlingen the call from citizens and companies for hail defense has gotten increasingly louder. In Stuttgart and in the Black Forest hail planes have been in use for years to prevent damage.”

Apparently the citizens of Reutlingen really do believe their local government has power over weather. Moreover, these citizens appear no longer able to take steps on their own to protect themselves – seemingly unaware that there are other options available to them, like insurance, or carports. Like the German government is expected to save the world’s climate, the citizens of Reutlingen also expect their local politicians to save them from bad weather.

If you happen to have a Brooklyn Bridge to sell, go to Reutlingen!

 

11 responses to “Town Of Reutlingen Votes To Attempt Bad-Weather-Taming…In Bid To Reduce Hail Size, Storm Damage”

  1. Graeme No.3

    Australia spent considerable time and money trying silver iodide as nuclei to cause rain drops to form. The results were so close to random that no-one called for more testing.

  2. ES

    They have been doing that in Alberta since 1996. It is paid for by the insurance industry. They say that it reduces the size of the hail.

    http://www.weathermodification.com/projects.php?id=6

  3. John F. Hultquist

    Controlling the size of hail might require a strategy more sensitive than just not having any at all. Someone might suggest to the populace via a newspaper letter to the editor that if enough people take metal washtubs and wooden spoons to the town center and bang mightily as a storm approaches it will veer away, perhaps dump its load of hail on the next town. The Coriolis effect, in Germany, would deflect the storm to the right of its path and any town in that new direction could also send out metal washtub and wooden spoons and the storm could be directed into Switzerland or Austria. Problem solved and they save 50,000 euros.

  4. Town Of Reutlingen Votes To Attempt Bad-Weather-Taming…In Bid To Reduce Hail Size, Storm Damage | Cranky Old Crow

    […] Town Of Reutlingen Votes To Attempt Bad-Weather-Taming…In Bid To Reduce Hail Size, Storm Damage. […]

  5. Bob in Castlemaine

    It seems to be an unanswered question here in Australia, the CSIRO doesn’t support it but some organisations like Hydro Tasmania once did? Given CSIRO’s lamentable reputation when it comes to climate modelling you probably wouldn’t pay too much heed to them, Hydro Tasmania once supported seeding but these days not sure?
    With the abolition of Australia’s $25/tonne Carbon dioxide tax Hydro Tasmania may have moved on from hydro, it may have shifted focus to turning a dollar by collecting RET (Renewable Energy Target) subsidies from wind projects including a large 200+? turbine wind scheme which will likely turn the hitherto peaceful small farming and tourist community of King Island, Bass Strait into an uninhabitable wasteland.

  6. L Michael Hohmann

    They should acquaint themselves with King Canute – or could try reading http://cleanenergypundit.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/tyger-lair-from-edenhofer-interview-1.html

  7. Walter H. Schneider

    Come on now, don’t pick on the poor residents of Reutlingen. It’s only $50,000 and for a good cause, “the precautionary principle.” To which people usually offer this excuse: “I know that it may not help and is perhaps nothing more than superstition, but you never know. Besides, it won’t do any harm.” Which is of course nothing other than justifying one superstitious rationalization with a logical fallacy.

    However, as such rationalizations of the precautionary principle go, just about the same reasoning was given to me when I spoke to an offical of Shell Canada about the uselesness of their Carbon Capture and Sequestration scheme for the Scotford Oilsands upgrader (in Alberta, Canada) that is nearing completion now, at an overall cost of about $1.3 billion.

    Shell is the smart one. They will contribute only $150 million of that. The rest will be donated by the Canadian, predominantly Albertan, taxpayers; about $400 for every man, woman and child in Alberta. $1.3 billion, not a matter of choice but a condition demanded by the Canadian government for issuing the operating licence for the Shell Scotford oilsands upgrader — to make the Canadian Oilsands look green — to make green oil out of “dirty oil”, not because anyone in power believes that it will do any good.

    Again, let no one tell me that there are a lot of nuts in Reutlingen. Canada will raise you $1.3 billion.

  8. Walter H. Schneider

    Re: Letters-to-the-editor, metal washtubs and wooden spoons? Consider this:

    Latin inscription that customarily adorned many church bells.

    Vivos voco
    Mortuos plango
    Fulgura frango

    Translation:

    I call the living,
    Mourn the dead,
    Shatter lightning.

    Source – in German: “Kleine Kulturgeschichte des Gewitters,” Karl-Heinz Hentschel, März 1993, http://www.karl-heinz-hentschel.net/Gewitter2.html

  9. R'oss Le'Bloi

    Also when they spray food,water ensures people will come up with the radioreptallian disease .. I see chem trails everywhere and it is Global Warming as we have 5 foot rise in oceanic levels (not at shoreline but deep in middle) And my lake has drought in the summer due to man global warming.We must stop all productivity to reduce warming,spraying only will add warming as bigger hail is good,as it cools the ground when it hits.

    1. DirkH

      Please ask your handler to give you a reset.

      1. Ed Caryl

        He is being sarcastic and English is not his first language.

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