With a Doppler radar, which has been taken on hire from the US for two months, being commissioned in Bengaluru, cloud seeding operations were conducted as far as Hassan and Mysuru districts on the Cauvery River basin on Thursday.
Officials of the Rural Development and Panchayati Raj Department said cloud seeding was done in five places with 10 flares being used to seed five clouds. In a two-hour flight, two clouds near Ballur (Mysuru district), one each at Neeragunda and Chatchatnahalli (Hassan district) and Kudur village (Ramanagaram) were seeded.
Clouds which are growing in size are targeted and flares spray chemicals — sodium chloride, potassium chloride and silver iodide — which will condense smaller water particles into larger droplets that constitute rain.
Unlike on Wednesday, officials said the commissioning of the Doppler radar in Bengaluru helped identify ‘seedable’ clouds in the path of the flight.
Meanwhile, RDPR officials said rainfall of between 2mm and 30mm was observed in Magadi and Maddur where cloud seeding was conducted on Wednesday. However, there was no official word on the percentage of precipitation that was caused due to the cloud seeding itself.
Other basins soon
H.P. Prakash Kumar, chief engineer, RDPR and in-charge of the operation (called Project Varshadhari), said two other radars are being set up in Gadag and Shorapur (Yadgir district). Once they become operational on Monday, cloud seeding could be conducted in the Malaprabha and Tungabhadra basins.
