A chemical cloud-seeding company focused on manufacturing human-caused rainclouds has reportedly unleashed 19 million gallons of rainwater on the Kenai Peninsula.
Founded in 2023, Rainmaker Technology Corporation claims it produced the rain over three hours on Aug. 22-23.
A highly technical report from the California-based company says the deluge operation was the first of its kind by a private entity in Alaska.
The recent operation is part of Rainmaker’s larger goal of seeding clouds across the nation in an effort to manufacture more rain by using specialized drones, advanced radar and weather sensors.
To date, Rainmaker has operated in several Western states, including Utah, Idaho, Oregon, California, and Colorado. Earlier this year, it reported becoming the first private company to validate significant results from cloud seeding, estimating over 143–145 million gallons of additional water produced in cloud seeding over Utah and Oregon.
The technology behind cloud seeding involves using existing clouds and then employing drones to pump them with microscopic particles of silver iodide. These particles act like tiny “seeds” that encourage droplets to freeze into ice crystals, which then grow by collecting more moisture and eventually fall as snow or rain.
Rainmaker’s Alaska operation included releasing 19 silver iodide flares from two so-called “Elijah” drones in seven missions that dispersed about 374 grams of silver iodide at altitudes of about 11,500–14,100 feet.
Rainmaker then calculated that the operation produced a net increase of roughly 15–21 million gallons of additional water over three hours.
The company presented the findings as a successful proof-of-concept for its drone-based system.
While cloud-seeding technology has existed for nearly 80 years, Rainmaker intends to expand the practice to manipulate weather patterns across the U.S. This includes dumping water into the Colorado River and the Bear River Basin in order to increase flow into the Great Salt Lake in Utah.
Rainmaker founder and CEO Augustus Doricko boasted on X that his company is the first to “provably produce precipitation in Alaska.”
“In the future, Rainmaker will protect and restore glaciers with man-made snowfall,” he added.
Whether manmade rain and snow will sit well with the general public remains to be seen, as the technology has already stirred considerable controversy.
Rainmaker’s FAA petition for carrying cloud-seeding flares on drones remains in limbo, and the Air Line Pilots Association has warned that the Rainmaker technology poses “an extreme safety risk,” included airspace integration, flare debris/fire hazards, and lack of certain modeling.
Additionally, states like Florida and Tennessee have flat-out banned the practice of injecting clouds with chemicals aimed at manipulating temperature, weather, climate or sunlight. Violation of the law in Florida carries a third-degree felony charge that can result in up to 5 years in prison and fines up to $100,000.
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A 2024 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office raised concerns about possible environmental and health effects from cloud seeding.
“Existing research we reviewed, while limited to a handful of recent studies, suggests silver iodide does not pose an environmental or health concern at current levels,” the report stated. “However, it is not known whether more widespread use of silver iodide would have an effect on public health or the environment.”
On the federal level the Clear Skies Act, introduced last summer by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), seeks to ban “weather modification,” including the intentional injection, release, or dispersion of chemicals/substances into the atmosphere to alter weather, temperature, climate, or sunlight intensity. Violations would be treated as a felony.
