Until recently, one of the biggest controversies over cloud seeding — a method created to encourage rain — was whether it actually works. That's now been overshadowed by online theories blaming the technology for the deadly floods in Texas.
Experts say falsehoods like these are spreading faster than ever after natural disasters — hurting emergency planning and response efforts.
“This is unprecedented in my experience,” said Amber Silver, a professor in the Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Security at SUNY Albany, who studies disaster communication. “There's always been misinformation, clearly. But to this scale and to this degree, not in my memory.”
Silver first noticed a sharp increase in the spread and acceptance of weather-related conspiracy theories in 2024 after Hurricanes Helen and Milton brought unprecedented and deadly flooding to parts of the Southeastern U.S. At that time, a false online rumor took hold that the government had set the hurricanes on their paths of destruction as an attack against red state voters.
Cloud seeding is a method of combatting drought by releasing tiny particles into clouds to spur rain. The technology doesn’t create clouds, but it can increase the rain that falls from them in localized and limited circumstances.
After the flooding in Texas, some online accounts pointed to a cloud-seeding operation in a different part of Texas a couple days earlier. Theories that the seeding led to the disaster took off from there.
“There is zero science whatsoever out there, zero, that correlates these two [things]," Victor Murphy, a recently retired National Weather Service meteorologist, said.
Nevertheless, some public figures amplified the theories. Right after the floods, former Trump adviser Michael Flynn raised questions about cloud seeding on X, and Georgia Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted that she was introducing a bill to ban cloud seeding and other types of weather modification.
Seeking the truth
Silver said the rise in weather-related conspiracy theories is no surprise.
Trust in public institutions is low, and the internet has put more people into online echo chambers. So, when catastrophes happen and people look for answers, false narratives get amplified quickly.
She said it’s hard to counter those narratives.
"We know from the research that saying, 'That's wrong. You're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong” isn't the way to do it," she said. "People tend to just entrench themselves in their own beliefs, and no one likes to feel like, ‘Oh, I was wrong or this person was calling me stupid.’”
Silver said fighting misleading information is better done by trusted community voices outside the context of a disaster, when emotions aren’t so high.
“A trusted official could be like an old-timer in a community who's been around for 80 years that everyone listens to understand if the river is going to flood," she said.
After the most recent weather misinformation started up, some local broadcast meteorologists pushed back. On a visit to Kerr County, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz warned people against trusting online rumors. The Environmental Protection Agency — without mentioning the floods specifically — also posted information explaining the science of cloud seeding and debunking conspiracies around aircraft condensation trails.
Augustus Doricko, CEO of the cloud-seeding company that was operating in Texas before the floods, also spoke out against the rumors.
Distraction or worse
Doricko said he and his family have received death threats since the conspiracy theories took hold. A radar system maintained by a local news station in Oklahoma was also vandalized, apparently, as a result of the falsehoods.
Silver said another thing that is damaged by online myth-making is our scientific understanding about increasing extreme weather.
“It’s ironic,” she said. “These [conspiracy] echo chambers will decry the notion of anthropocentric climate change on one hand, and then turn around and say that we have the technology to modify the weather at such a micro scale on the other hand.”
Finally, experts say, misinformation about the extreme weather gets in the way of seeking answers to questions about emergency preparedness and response that often emerge after a disaster.
“There's no good news coming out of this [disaster],” said Troy Kimmel, an Austin-based emergency management response meteorologist. “I think we got other problems on our plate right now, and I don't think this needs to distract us.”
He said he worries outlandish theories could interfere with peoples’ understanding about how forecasting and warning systems operated in the lead up to last week’s floods. That kind of information is crucial to improving communication during the next natural disaster.
