California is so desperate for water that it has resorted to unconventional and controversial methods to prevent this water crisis from escalating. The governor, Jerry Brown, has declared a state of emergency and the Department of Water Resources is reducing the supply of water from reservoirs to its lowest level in its 54 year history.
The severity of the drought has escalated in recent months, and the state has ramped up efforts to induce rainfall through weather modification technology known as cloud seeding by spraying fine particles of silver iodide into a cloud system. This causes water droplets to form ice crystals and increase in size and turn into snowflakes.
Though the technology dates back to the Vietnam War era, California state agencies hope to mitigate the impact of the severe and prolonged drought. For example, utility districts have reportedly hired pilots to seed clouds over areas that could enhance hydroelectric operations and the California Department of Water Resources estimates that cloud seeding already adds 400,000 acre-feet of additional water annually.
Legal questions and safety issues remain a concern, but the drought in California is so bad that the state is going ahead with its cloud seeding programs. California is one of the key food growing states in the United States. Drought could lead to severe shortages of many food items normally shipped all over the nation.
“But now the signs are fulfilling,—nation rising against nation, startling calamities by land and by sea, famine, pestilence, fearful storms, sweeping floods, and great conflagrations. All these testify that we are approaching the grand consummation.” Review and Herald, January 1, 1889