SCOUTING YESTERDAY | South Dakota skeptics spell end for state-backed cloud seeding

This week in South Dakota history: Feb. 7-13

Photo: South Dakota State University

A quarter century after South Dakota tried its hand at rainmaking and hail suppression, the state Weather Modification Program faced a funding crisis.

South Dakota lawmakers 50 years ago this week were debating the merits of the initiative launched four years earlier, with the Rapid City Journal reporting on Feb. 13, 1975, that members of the Joint Committee on Appropriations were preparing to med the program.

That year, legislators serving in South Dakota’s 50th Legislative Session faced increasing pressure from a group called Citizens Against Cloud Seeding that argued the state’s attempt at weather control may have actually decreased rainfall in drought-stricken areas of the state.