Andrew,
There is one (scientist) person left alive who participated in the
work on the mission which was related to the Lynmouth floods.
If you believe that Newton's laws of motion, and the Navier Stokes
equations are applicable in the atmosphere, then there can be no
connection between flights over Salisbury Plain and Lynmouth. Boscastle
was a similar storm for possibly similar generating factors .. not to
mention the Boltby storm last deacde.
Alan
On Tue, 17 Feb 2015, Andrew Lockley wrote:
Poster's note : this historical news piece almost certainly incorrectly points
the finger of blame - a large low pressure
system and a cold front combined to cause the flood. Nevertheless, it's
instructive of the controversies we can expect in a
geoengineered world.
RAF rainmakers 'caused 1952 flood'
http://gu.com/p/pvtn
John Vidal and Helen Weinstein
Published: 10:56 GMT+01:00 Thu 30 August 2001
On August 15, 1952, one of the worst flash floods ever to have occurred in
Britain swept through the Devon village of
Lynmouth. Thirty five people died as a torrent of 90m tons of water and
thousands of tons of rock poured off saturated
Exmoor and into the village destroying homes, bridges, shops and hotels.
The disaster was officially termed "the hand of God" but new evidence from
previously classified government files suggests
that a team of international scientists working with the RAF was experimenting
with artificial rainmaking in southern
Britain in the same week and could possibly be implicated.
Squadron Leader Len Otley, who was working on what was known as Operation
Cumulus, has told the BBC that they jokingly
referred to the rainmaking exercise as Operation Witch Doctor.
His navigator, Group Captain John Hart, remembers the success of these early
experiments: "We flew straight through the top
of the cloud, poured dry ice down into the cloud. We flew down to see if any
rain came out of the cloud. And it did about 30
minutes later, and we all cheered."
The meteorological office has in the past denied there were any rainmaking
experiments conducted before 1955, but a BBC
Radio 4 history investigation, to be broadcast tonight, has unearthed documents
recently released at the public record
office showing that they were going on from 1949 to 1955. RAF logbooks and
personnel corroborate the evidence.
Until now, the Ministry of Defence has categorically denied knowledge of any
cloud-seeding experiments taking place in the
UK during early August 1952. But documents suggest that Operation Cumulus was
going on between August 4 and August 15 1952.
The scientists were based at Cranfield school of aeronautics and worked in
collaboration with the RAF and the MoD's
meteorological research flight based at Farnborough. The chemicals were
provided by ICI in Billingham.
Met office reports from these dates describe flights undertaken to collect data
on cumulus cloud temperature, water content,
icing rate, vertical motions and turbulence, and water droplet and ice crystal
formation. There is no mention of cloud
seeding.
But a 50-year-old radio broadcast unearthed by Radio 4 describes an
aeronautical engineer and glider pilot, Alan Yates,
working with Operation Cumulus at the time and flying over Bedfordshire,
spraying quantities of salt. He was elated when the
scientists told him this had led to a heavy downpour 50 miles away over
Staines, in Middlesex.
"I was told that the rain had been the heaviest for several years - and all out
of a sky which looked summery ... there was
no disguising the fact that the seedsman had said he'd make it rain, and he
did. Toasts were drunk to meteorology and it was
not until the BBC news bulletin [about Lynmouth] was read later on, that a stony
silence fell on the company," said Mr Yates
at the time.
Operation Cumulus was put on hold indefinitely after the tragedy.
Declassified minutes from an air ministry meeting, held in the war office on
November 3, 1953, show why the military were
interested in increasing rain and snow by artificial means. The list of possible
uses included "bogging down enemy
movement", "incrementing the water flow in rivers and streams to hinder or stop
enemy crossings", and clearing fog from
airfields.
The documents also talk of rainmaking having a potential "to explode an atomic
weapon in a seeded storm system or cloud.
This would produce a far wider area of radioactive contamination than in a normal
atomic explosion".
UK weather modification experiments at the time presaged current practice in the US. The
idea was to target "super cool"
clouds, and to increase the volume of freezing water vapour particles. Most
methods involved firing particles of salt, dry
ice, or silver iodide, into clouds, either from an aeroplane or from burners on
the ground. The clouds would then
precipitate, pulled down below freezing point by the extra weight of dense
particles, thus making it rain sooner and heavier
than it might have done. Significantly, it was claimed that silver iodide could
cause a downpour up to 300 miles away.
Many countries now use the technology, which has considerably improved during
the past 50 years.
But controversy still surrounds the efficacy of these early cloud-seeding
experiments. In 1955 questions were asked in the
Commons about the possibilites of liability and compensation claims. Documents
seen by the BBC suggest that both the air
ministry and the Treasury became very anxious and were aware that rainmaking
could cause damage, not just to military
targets and personnel, but also to civilians.
The British Geological Survey has recently examined soil sediments in the
district of Lynmouth to see if any silver or
iodide residues remain. The testing has been limited due to restrictions in
place because of foot and mouth disease, and it
is inconclusive. However, silver residue has been discovered in the catchment
waters of the river Lyn. The BGS will
investigate further over the next 18 months.
Survivors of the Lynmouth flood called for - but never got - a full
investigation into the causes of the disaster. Rumours
persist to this day of planes circling before the inundation.
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Alan Gadian
Senior Scientist, NCAS, Environment, Leeds University, LS1 9JT , UK
Email: [email protected] or [email protected]
Tel: (+44)/(0) 113 343 7246 Mobile: (+44)/(0) 775 451 9009
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