Weather Wars A Reality?

Reinforcing the sense of urgency, President Eisenhower’s special committee on weather modification submitted its final report in January 1958, just months after Sputnik’s launch. The committee’s chairman, retired Navy Captain Howard T. Orville, said at a press conference that he suspected that the Soviets already had begun a large, secret program on weather control. Despite routine dismissals of the idea throughout the decade by meteorologists, the high-level committee ranked weather control ahead of hydrogen bombs and satellites in military significance. Orville urged the government to support research on controlling large-scale weather systems, not just rainmaking. He further suggested that finding ways to manipulate the heat balance between the sun and earth might be the key to weather and climate control.