For over a century, man has chased the ability to control the weather. From early rainmakers to secret military programs and geo-engineering startups, it’s real, documented and impacting tens of millions of Americans right now. 

Yet in most of America, there’s almost no regulation. Anyone – even theoretically a hostile foreign actor – can alter your weather without your consent. Or even try to change the climate, for profit.

A flash point came last July. After years of drought, central Texas got 13 inches of rain. The Guadalupe River rose 31 feet in 90 minutes, killing dozens.

Just days before and 130 miles away in Karnes County, Rainmaker Technology Corporation says it seeded two small clouds with silver iodide to make it rain.

Geo-engineering watchdog Dane Wigington claimed in an interview on July 9 the procedure steered or supercharged the Texas disaster. 

“There was nothing natural about this event,” Wigington said. “How bad does it have to get before people look up, wake up, stand up and start to talk about the all-out biological and chemical warfare taking place in our skies? Texas is a horrible event, and there are so many more like it happening all over the globe.”

In interviews, including a July 9 one with Fox News Channel's Will Cain, rainmaker CEO Augustus Doricko argued his operations could not possibly have produced that rain.

“Unequivocally, our cloud seeding operations on July 2nd did not impact the flooding that occurred later,” Dorickco said “The very best operations can produce tens of millions of gallons of precipitation over hundreds of square miles—that is de minimis relative to the remnants of the tropical storm that came in and dumped trillions of gallons of precipitation.”

Yet skepticism persists about man’s undaunted effort to master the weather. 

America’s first big weather-modification scandal dates back to 1916. San Diego hired famed “rainmaker” Charles Hatfield to break a drought. He released his secret chemical brew from towers and it began to rain – and didn’t stop for two solid weeks.

Bridges collapsed, train tracks were buried in water, and crops destroyed. On January 27, 2016, the lower Otay dam collapsed, sending a 40-foot wall of water tearing through the valley and destroying all in its path. San Diego was cut off from the rest of the world for weeks. To this day, it’s the most rain ever documented there – and San Diego’s worst ever natural disaster.

Over the decades, the U.S. government has been involved in weather engineering – publicly and secretly. 

In 1947, the military and GE launched “Project Cirrus” to try to weaken hurricanes with frozen carbon dioxide, the solid form of dry ice. 

But in one case, with Hurricane King in 1950, the storm actually strengthened, changed paths and devastated Savannah, Georgia.

Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson spoke of the thirst to manipulate Mother Nature. 

“We shall propose further cooperative efforts between all nations in weather prediction and eventually in weather control," Kennedy said in a United Nations speech on September 25, 1961.

 A year later, Johnson, in speaking at Southwest Texas State University about the promise of weather satellites, said such an effort would "permit man to determine the world’s cloud layer and ultimately ... control the weather. And he who controls the weather will control the world.”

After that, the government’s Project Stormfury seeded hurricanes in the 60s and 70s including Beulah (1963), Debbie (1969), and Ginger (1971)…with mixed results.

The U.S. also secretly weaponized weather control. 

The classified “Operation Popeye” – from 1967 to 1972 – dispersed silver iodide as smoke from flares on airplane wings over Vietnam during the War, to extend monsoons and turn enemy supply routes into mud. When exposed, after many denial, there was global outrage followed by a UN treaty banning hostile use of weather modification. 

Today, there’s cloud seeding in at least nine states. But the government delineates many other techniques to make rain or snow, suppress hail, build clouds, eliminate fog, or reduce evaporation using fire or heat; applying powders, sprays, or dyes to water surfaces; emitting radioactive particles or ions from towers or aircraft; using shock waves, sonic booms, or explosives; and steering lightning with powerful lasers.

Perhaps the most debated category of weather control is Solar Radiation Management to dim the sun and cool the planet. Methods include Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI) – injecting sulfur or other reflective particles into the stratosphere, and Marine Cloud Brightening (MCB) – dispersing seawater spray to make low clouds whiter.

Believe it or not, it’s all barely regulated. A 1972 federal weather modification law runs on an honor system – just paperwork, no verification. In 35 states there are no permits required, no audits conducted, no limits imposed. Most anyone can control weather for profit, altering other people’s rainfall or snow, without ever asking permission.

As for contrails: the EPA has said it’s not aware of any used for weather control. At least 13 states have bills pending to restrict contrail use, anyway, or other tactics. Weather control bans recently passed in Tennessee, Montana, and the Sunshine State of Florida. 

The EPA says the Trump administration is currently figuring out whether Congress needs to act, or whether a different federal agency should take the lead on weather modification regulations.