RESUMO
In order to explain the apparent losses of rain ascribable to seeding at the Whitetop trial, particularly large and highly significant in the stratum E (but not in the opposite stratum W) of experimental days, it has been hypothesized that seeding causes widespread cloudiness and subsequent lowering of ground temperatures. This hypothesis is flatly contradicted by the observations: the seeded E-days (but not W-days) were uniformly less cloudy and hotter than those without seeding. Curiously, these differences prevailed not only from the scheduled time of seeding but also for several hours beforehand. The average rainfall for the 10 hr that preceded the time of seeding was investigated in eight "cells", defined by the day's wind direction to be downwind, upwind, and to the sides and "far" and "near" the center of seeding. Highly significant decreases were found in the far-upwind and far-left cells, indicating an earlymorning disparity between those E-days that later were declared as experimental to be seeded and those E-days that were declared as experimental not to be seeded. This disparity, difficult to explain by chance variation, suggests that particular caution be used in treating differences in the rainfall between seeded and not-seeded days in the Whitetop trial as having been caused by seeding.
RESUMO
By means of two stratifications of experimental days of the Whitetop Project-into categories E and W and into categories air mass and frontal-the effects of cloud seeding on precipitation downwind, upwind, and to the sides, up to 180 miles from the seeding line, were investigated. No significant effects were found for W and frontal days. On the other hand, for E and airmass days, significant and highly significant apparent effects of seeding were found in all directions and in areas at distances up to 180 miles. All these significant apparent effects are negative, the largest of them indicating that seeding reduced precipitation to one quarter of its unseeded value.
RESUMO
The subdivision of all the experimental days of the Whitetop project into two approximately equal groups, group W with predominantly westerly winds aloft and group E with frequent easterly winds, shows a remarkable difference in the apparent effect of seeding. On W days there was no detectable effect of seeding on rainfall. On E days with seeding, the average 24 hour precipitation in an area of about 100,000 square miles was significantly less than that without seeding by 46 per cent of the latter. The decrease resulted from a "decapitation" of the usual afternoon rise in rainfall. It may be significant that the afternoon maximum of natural precipitation on E days occurs some two hours later than on W days. If the actual cause of the differences in rainfall was seeding, then the loss of water resulting from operational, rather than experimental, seeding would have averaged eight million acre-feet per summer.
RESUMO
The average hourly precipitation amounts, on 96 experimental days without cloud seeding in the Whitetop experiment, show a marked maximum between 4 and 7 o'clock in the afternoon, presumably reflecting the convection activity caused by heating of the ground occurring during an earlier period. No such maximum is observed on the 102 days with seeding. The hypothetical explanation presupposes that seeding with silver iodide creates early general cloudiness, which prevents ground temperatures from rising to levels usually attained on days without seeding. This hypothesis may explain not only the mechanism of the loss in rain in the Whitetop experiment, apparently induced by seeding, but also may explain certain phenomena noticed in the Grossversuch III experiment.
