From The Sky-Hi Daily News (Travis Poulin):
At their October 4 meeting, the Winter Park Town Council passed a motion to allow a ceilometer to be installed on the roof of the Winter Park Town Hall. . A ceilometer is a device that uses a laser to determine the height of a cloud base.
The town received a request from the Colorado Water Conservancy Board (CWCB), Denver Water and Winter Park Resort to place the device on the Town Hall building to aid them in their cloud seeding program. It will detect multiple layers of cloud height as well as measure the liquid water available in the clouds. The ceilometer will allow them to provide better forecasting for the cloud seeding program.
In addition to the cloud seeding program, this device will be available to pilots flying into Grand County. The pilots can determine the base elevation of the clouds as they approach the runway at the Granby/ Grand County Airport. The ceilometer is approximately four feet tall and would be attached to an existing concrete pillar.
The ceilometer will need electricity and Internet service. The electricity usage is approximately 5 amps per month (about 55 cents per month). The data usage is approximately a half a megabyte per month. The additional Internet service would not require upgrades as the current system has adequate space.
The Winter Park Town Council, CWCB, Denver Water, and Winter Park resort are now in the process of drafting a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for the installation of the ceilometer. The council also determined they will need a lease agreement for the project.
CLOUD SEEDING IN GRAND COUNTY
There are currently two cloud seeding generators in Grand County—one to the north of the Younglife camp at Crooked Creek Ranch, and the other near Churches Park in Fraser. The generators are remotely operated and controlled from Reno, Nev. They have been in place since 2009.
The Desert Research Institute (DRI) runs the cloud seeding program. According to their website, DRI currently has five cloud seeding operations: the San Juans (Mancos) Project, the San Miguel (Telluride) Project, Tahoe and Truckee basins, Walker Basin, and the Winter Park/ Denver Water Project. The purpose of the program is to augment snowfall in mountainous regions that supply water to northern and southern Nevada, and increase the snowpack and resultant runoff from the targeted basins.
According to DRI website, ground-based generators are used to burn a solution of silver iodide, sodium iodide, salt and acetone to release microscopic silver iodide particles which can create additional ice crystals, then snow, in winter clouds. Weather conditions are selected to optimize fallout in targeted basins. Generators are remotely operated by telephone landline, by radio or by other types of wireless communication. A seeding aircraft is frequently used to augment ground seeding operations. The aircraft releases AgI from wing-mounted solution burners. Dry ice is also used occasionally to seed shallow cloud systems, including fog over airports.
According to the website, benefits vary with the seasonal frequency of suitable weather opportunities. Research results have documented precipitation rate increases of a few hundredths to about two millimeters per hour due to ground-based seeding during the proper weather conditions. Based on the rate increases, estimates of augmented snow water from the DRI seeding program have varied from 20,000 to 80,000 acre-feet annually over the past 15 years of operation.
Seasonal percentage increase estimates have varied from two percent to ten percent The cost of augmented water, based on the annual cost of the program, has ranged from $7 to about $18 per acre-foot, according to DRI.
