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Softening Opposition. Many authorities did not agree with him. Langmuir's theories have been attacked by the U.S. Weather Bureau, by civilian and military meteorologists. In 1948 the Weather Bureau tried its own cloud-seeding experiments, dumping dry ice and silver iodide into clouds in Ohio. No significant rain fell from them. Langmuir's explanation is that the clouds were the wrong kind in the first place, and that they were greatly overseeded.
Some conservative meteorologists are still arguing with Langmuir & Co. Their position is that all weather effects are produced by the "synoptic situation," the complicated interaction of air masses of varying temperatures, pressure and wind velocity. All "artificial" rain, they insist, would have fallen anyhow, without man's help. The July 1949 rainfall in New Mexico, for instance, they attribute to a front moving in from the Gulf of Mexico.
The Weather Bureau has shown recent signs of softening its opposition. Its chief, Dr. Francis W. Reichelderfer, gives Langmuir and Schaefer full credit for showing how a cloud can be precipitated. Reichelderfer agrees that certain special clouds, such as the cold clouds which form over mountains, can be seeded profitably. But he thinks Langmuir's claims are too sweeping. "My impression," he says, "is that Langmuir and his associates were successful in speeding up the rain formation process in a few cases, but I feel quite sure that in many cases the rain was due to natural causes."
Farmers' Lament. Some of the rainmakers themselves hesitate to claim positive results from their efforts. Operating in the same touchy area where Irving Langmuir started, New York's Dr. Howell was warned that if he talked too much about dumping rain on the watersheds New York City might be sued by outraged farmers and resort owners in the Catskills. Until a fortnight ago he never mentioned his results. Then he cautiously admitted that his efforts had produced "a certain amount" of rain. In the same breath he suggested that on some occasions they might also have lessened the normal rainfall by overseeding.
In any case, New York City was satisfied enough to extend Howell's contract for another six months and the reservoirs are all now nearly full, a rare condition at this season. Upstate New Yorkers are even more belligerently certain of his success.
Just after Howell got busy with his planes and generators, New York began having a miserable spring and early summer of warm rains, cold drizzles and sticky fogs. In the Catskills it rained and rained. The important sweet corn crop was badly damaged; weeds grew high in fields too. gooey to cultivate. Farmers threatened to shoot Howell; so did resort owners. "Look," said Julius Slutsky, a proprietor of the upstate Nevele Hotel (which tried to sue New York City), "our guests come from New York City. They don't know much about the country. They say, 'They got rainmakers up there, so why should we go up to Slutsky's?' "
What Do Ants Do? As a cautious scientist, Irving Langmuir himself would never go so far as Julius Slutsky's guests. But he is convinced nonetheless that man can make rain if he goes about it at the right time and in the right way.