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Project Description:

Title: Evaluating the impact of wintertime cloud seeding on the snowpack and streamflow in a watershed
P.I.: A. Huggins, D. Boyle, D. Koracin (co P.I.s)
Duration: February 2003 - February 2004 (extended)
Sponsor: DOI - Bureau of Reclamation (Contract # 03FC810858)

The research plan focuses on snowpack augmentation for drought mitigation studies. The four main objectives of the research are: 1) to remotely sense supercooled cloud water in order to quantify the cloud seeding potential in the Walker Basin, 2) to employ mesoscale atmospheric and dispersion modeling to evaluate cloud seeding effectiveness under variety of storm conditions in the Walker and Truckee Basins, 3) to evaluate seeding effectiveness through the use of physical and chemical analysis of snowpacks in the Walker and Truckee Basins, and 4) to estimate the impacts of seeding-induced increases in snowpacks on streamflow through the use of hydrologic models in the Waker and Truckee Basins.