In 1953 steps were taken to settle, once and for all, the question of whether or not cloud-seeding worked. The father of this enterprise was New Mexico's Albert K. Mitchell, who had looked up Krick in 1930 after learning about him from Denver banker Tom Dines. Thanks to timely rains that followed seeding of the clouds by Krick, Mitchell had just put up the biggest hay crop he had harvested in years.

Mitchell was a personal friend of Dwight Eisenhower, who had been elected President, and he suggested to Eisenhower-as well as to Senator Clinton Anderson of New Mexico-that a committee be formed to make a survey of all the cloud-seeding that had been going on, by professionals and amateurs alike, and see how it came out. Did it bring rain and, if so, how much?

Senator Francis Case of South Dakota, himself involved in cloud-seeding experiments, introduced a bill to create the Presdent's Advisory Committee on Weather Control to be composed of five members from the fields of science, agriculture, and business and six from appropriate government departments and agencies.

Passed by Congress, the bill was signed into law by the President on August 13, 1953. On December 9, the President named the members, and on December 18, the committee's chairman, Captain Harold T. Orville, who had been the Navy's head weatherman during the war, charting the weather for Jimmie Doolittle's famous raid on Tokyo, convened the first meeting of the group.

Its job, as Captain Orville spelled it out, was to "study and evaluate public and private experiments designed to modify the weather"-make it rain, that is. Everybody who was seeding the clouds, whether for hire or for experimentation, was required to let the committee know what it was doing.

"If the Advisory Committee finds that weather modification experiments cannot produce important results, it will so report and thus deter farmers and ranchers from spending their money unwisely," Senator Case said, speaking in support of the group's first appropriation.

"If the Advisory Committee finds that weather modification activities work only in certain circumstances, it will find out what these circumstances are and thus encourage feasible projects and discourage those which are not feasible.

"If the Advisory Committee finds out it can confirm the results claimed by the reports it has so far received from reputable and scientifically competent operators-increases of from 7 to 50 percent and more-then the dollar benefits to agriculture, industry, and government will be so great as to be incalculable."

The committee devoted the first six months to doing its homework-studying the subject of rainmaking, meeting with scientists, and going into the field to observe firsthand how seeding was done. It even borrowed some generators "and tried some seeding tests on its own. By January 3, 1955, the committee had agreed on the approach it would take to its assignment and, with a competent staff, set to work.

Although it was understood that during the time the President's Advisory Committee on Weather Control was doing its work, the Weather Bureau would refrain from making comments about the subject of cloud-seeding, one way or the other, the word of this restraint seemed not to get around too well among weathermen in the field.

By the spring of 1956, Krick fell obliged to protest directly to Weather Bureau Chief Reichelderfer, sending him a clipping from two newspapers in Florida, the Lakeland Ledger and the Tampa Morning Tribune, each quoting the local weather bureau man in remarks reflecting a low opinion of cloud-seeding. Since Krick had a seeding project going nearby, these comments were of more than passing interest to him.

"It appears obvious to our client and to our company that these statements . . . are made with the definite intent to minimize any results we might achieve," Krick wrote Reichelderfer. "We shall be pleased to have your comments . . . at your early convenience so that we may determine whether additional action will be required..."

Reichelderfer promised, by return mail, to look into the matter. Three weeks later he reported that the instigator appeared to be a reporter who craftily led the weatherman to say things he wouldn't otherwise have said.

"Mr. Johnson [the weatherman in question] reiterated that he is thoroughly familiar with the instructions issued by the Bureau on this subject," the Bureau chief went on. He assured Krick that everything possible was being done "to keep discussions on this controversial subject at the proper scientific level."

In late 1956 Krick was chosen to perform a function for a man he had served before. President Elsenhower's Inaugural Parade Committee selected him to forecast the weather for his second inauguration on January 20 of the new year. Using a Remington Rand Univac computer for the first time, Krick saw that the weather during the period of the inaugural was going to be tricky. "Our preliminary studies indicate that the major storm of the period may occur at Washington on the night of the twentieth, with conditions beginning to improve on the twenty-first and into the twenty-second," Krick informed C. Langhorne Washburn, chair man of the inaugural committee, near the end of December.

On January II, with nine days to go, Krick wired Washburn that he was standing by his earlier prediction. "We still expect a stormy period will occur about the twentieth, starting sometime on the nineteenth. Improving conditions are expected on the twenty- first but rather cold and windy . . ."

A week before the ceremony, Krick refined his forecast further. It would be raining up until seven o'clock on the morning of inaugural day, but the cloudiness would break around noon. He advised that Eisenhower be kept indoors until that time. It would then be dry and reasonably clear, with temperatures in the forties. This would be the only break in several days of bad weather.

It all turned out just as Krick predicted. It rained all night, but let up in the morning. The skies cleared, and it was bright and cool for the swearing-in ceremony. Then it resumed raining.

"Right on the head," noted the Rocky Mountain News, reminding readers of Krick's forecast that it would be fair and cool. "It was just that-even to having the sun break forth while the President was being sworn in."

Krick's success with the inaugural forecast moved someone at the White House to telephone General Curtis LeMay, chief of the Strategic Air Command, suggesting that LeMay meet with Krick and see if this newest advance in long-range weather forecasting, involving the use of computers, might not have military uses.

General LeMay agreed and Krick twice visited SAC headquarters at Offut Air Force Base, Nebraska, in February and March 1957. "We can make a long-range weather study for strategic targets in adversary countries so that .you'll know in advance what kind of weather you'll be up against any time you have to go," he told LeMay.

The general and his staff agreed that it would be a good idea to set up a research program with Krick, to verify what he could do - to find out how far ahead he could forecast, how close he could come, and how often he could do it.

SAC sent a request for such a program up to Air Force Headquarters in Washington. There it was channeled to the Air Weather Service, whose chief scientific officer was Dr. Robert D. Fletcher President of the American Meteorological Society, who recently had warned his colleagues to beware of those who claim the ability to forecast the weather long-range.

The matter was dead.

While Krick was able to stir no more interest at SAC, he did get the attention of the American Meteorological Society. A number of the members had been sending in "newspaper articles releases regarding claims, attributed to you, on long-range weather forecasting capabilities," Thomas F. Malone, secretary of the AMS began ominously in a letter to Krick on April 8, 1957.

Malone quoted from a piece in the Houston Post, to the effect that "by next spring we will have daily weather charts. We will know what days it will rain in Texas and about how much. We are on the threshold of a dependable method of projecting the weather day by day for several years in advance ..."

Malone said, "The fact that a number of members of the Society have raised questions requires that our Committee on Professional Ethics and Standards consider the reported claims . . ."

Two "basic questions" were involved, whether Krick had really said the things he was said to have said, and, if so, whether he had ever let the society know what was his basis for saying them-"for their review prior to public announcement."

Krick wrote back that the fundamentals of CalTech's long-range forecasting techniques had first been presented at a national meeting of the AMS at CalTech in June, 1941. Later they were repeated as a special lecture series at the U. S. Weather Bureau in late September and early October, 1941. They were then described in technical papers published by CalTech in 1942 and 1943.

"We have never departed from the basic hypothesis outlined in these discourses and indicated clearly therein, that as data increased we would apply and adapt these techniques to high-speed electronic computers," Krick wrote to Malone.

Krick hopefully interpreted the attention the newspapers were giving to the subject of long-range forecasting as indicating "a healthy and growing interest on the part of the public in the impact of weather upon our lives."

Whatever the public's interest might be, the AMS insisted that long-range forecasting was an impossibility. "Weather forecasts prepared in some detail are possible for two or three days in advance," the society said in a statement issued on July 1, 1957. "The reliability of the prediction, however, decreases progressively after the first day..."

The society went on to say that anyone who published forecasts for a month or more in advance, or even for more than two or three days, was misleading the public.

As to where the AMS stood on cloud-seeding, although the President's Advisory Committee on Weather Modification was still gathering information on the topic, the society thought the committee was wasting its time. "Present knowledge of atmospheric processes offers no real basis for the belief that the weather or climate of a large portion of the country can be significantly modified by cloud-seeding," the AMS said in a statement on April 30, 19S7, ignoring the fact that Krick had been operating successfully in many countries since 1949.

Weather Bureau Chief Reichelderfer agreed with the AMS. "A review of the extensive experimentation in cloud-seeding which has been undertaken throughout the world, indicates that the results to the present time have been inconclusive and indefinite," he told a House committee holding hearings on a Senate bill to have the National Science Foundation carry on further research after the Eisenhower Committee was finished.

The AMS was soon back with a new lament against Krick. This time the object of their distress was an article under Krick's name. "Univac Pinpoints the Weather" in the Remington Rand Systems Magazine of March-April, 1957. This "may be infringing Society's code of ethics," AMS Malone wrote Krick, listing questionable passages in the piece.

To determine whether Krick had indeed overstepped the bounds of the Society's code of ethics, Malone directed him to present himself to the group's Council in New York on Monday, January 1958, at 10:00 A.M" "and be prepared either to refute or substantiate said statements."

Krick replied that the article in question had been written by a writer hired by the Remington Rand Corporation while he was out of the country, but that while he "might have phrased" some of it differently, the piece was essentially correct. Krick wrote that he was going to Europe and therefore would be unable to answer their summons.

Then he mentioned some grievances of his own. Since the Society had gone on record with its statement of July 1, 1957, discarding long-range forecasting as humbug, Krick wrote, it looked to him as if they had already made up their minds and that there was nothing he could say at the meeting to change them.

"It would seem more constructive to have developed a course of action . . . to determine whether we had truly progressed long range weather forecasting to a point where the broad implications in the Remington Rand Systems magazine article were acceptable," he wrote. He chided them for not checking with his group for its opinion before putting out the July 1, 1957, statement that no good forecast could be made beyond three days.

"Tomorrow we shall receive a visitor from one of the major industrial firms in the country," Krick went on. "His instructions from his superiors have been to remain with us as long as is necessary to become completely familiar with our program and its applications to that company's problems. This is the sort of action we had expected General LeMay to receive in answer to his request for a similar evaluation of our work as it affected the operations of the Strategic Air Command . . ."

Krick concluded disgustedly, "Our organization and its affiliates have always supported the Society and have continually looked for some signs of the dynamic, forceful leadership which would prove a credit to our science and to our profession. We have not found them."

Krick put the AMS out of his mind, as the President's Committee on Weather Modification, after three years' study, announced its overall findings on December 31, 1957, with a detailed two-volume report to follow in January of the new year. The committee concluded that seeding the clouds with silver iodide from ground generators did, in fact, increase rainfall by 10 to I5 percent in the mountainous states of the West. What the effect was in the flat country of the Plains States, it claimed not to have enough data to tell, although Krick's operations in the Great Plains, covering millions of acres, had been in progress for six years.

The improved rainfall which the committee was able to confirm to its satisfaction was enough to make a substantial difference. A study by Dean A. M. Eberle, of the School of Agriculture at South Dakota State College and vice-chairman of the President's Committee, showed that a mere one percent more rain above normal during the growing season paid the cost of seeding at harvest time.

Seeding from the ground was inexpensive compared to the value af the water it produced, the committee said, not only as it affected agriculture but power companies as well. "Utility organizations in the Pacific Coast area seem to have no doubts as to the value of the precipitation increases they get."

The committee further reported that timely seeding with silver iodide apparently reduced hailstorms by bringing down the rain before the drops had time to freeze into hailstones, or at least into large ones. In this, the committee had in mind the work of lrving Krick, who by this time had experimented with hail control both in the United States and Canada, with seemingly dramatic results.

Information compiled by the Alberta Hail Insurance Board indicated a reduction of 71 percent in wheat losses from hail during the time of Krick's operations to control this scourge. For forty years, on the average, hail had destroyed 13 percent of each year's wheat crop.

The President's Committee enthusiastically saw promise of the day when man might gain a measure of control over the weather taming its furies as well as increasing the rain. The members strongly advocated a greatly expanded program of research to bring this about.

But to committee chairman Orville, the findings of the group were a disappointment, as revealed by his letter thanking Krick for his help to the committee. "The information you furnished," Orville wrote, "was helpful in arriving at the final conclusions and recommendations (even though they were far too conservative in my opinion.)"

Captain Orville's dissatisfaction with the report stemmed from the successful pressures of the Weather Bureau to water it down. Krick's achievement in the French Alps for Electricite de France, showing increases in snowpack in winter of around 70 percent and annual increases of about 29 percent over historical relationships established between the target and outside control areas, were excluded from the report, as were the results of Krick's work in the Great Plains region, such as his projects to fill reservoirs for Oklahoma City, Dallas and other municipalities.

Although all were reported to the Eisenhower Committee, Krick's massive operations, worldwide, were wholly omitted from the final two-volume publication of the committee's extensive tax-paid survey of the effect of cloud-seeding as a means to increase precipitation.

The scientific establishment, on the other hand, felt that the report of the President's Committee was too sanguine. The scientists suffered "lingering doubts about its reality" and believed that the subject of artificial rainmaking needed a great deal more research.

With nothing settled, there were new hearings on the Senate measure to have the National Science Foundation take over the quest to learn more. Among the witnesses were Krick and two of his associates, who by this time had operated in twenty-seven states and a dozen foreign countries. Their prepared material included a bibliography of 650,000 hours of seeding time.

Krick testified that he was all for more research but urged that what was already known be put to use. "Where would we be today if we had continued basic research on automobiles . . . say, for twenty years before producing a model car?" he asked rhetorically. "I stress, we need an accelerated well-balanced program, including the actual field operational work. . . .

"Basic research is necessary," he repeated, "but I stress again the importance of the other phases. For instance, during the last fifteen years we have been engaged in a missile race. We have found that all the laboratory and basic research work means little if the missiles won't get off the ground. . . .

"Above all, let us not lose time," Krick urged. "We do not want this important work pushed back into the laboratories for ten years to rehash all that has been done-just for the mere satisfaction of scientists with negative attitudes."

Among others who had something to say at the hearing, includeing senators, public works officials, ranchers, farmers and banker; was Merrill }. Langfitt, farm service director for Radio Static KMA, of Shenandoah, Iowa.

"In March of this year," Langfitt said, "Dr. lrving Krick appeared before 700 farmers in the KMA auditorium and told them that his long-range forecast called for above normal precipitation for April, slightly below normal for May, above normal again for June, and slightly below normal for July and August. At the same time he told them they could expect, as a result of cloud-seeding, have normal or slightly above normal precipitation for the entire growing season.

"Dr. Krick's forecast put new life into our area. Seedsmen started selling seeds, fertilizer sales boomed, bank credit loosened retail sales took a spurt, and business in general was very good. Dr. Krick's forecast has held true to this date. I might add that six weeks after Dr. Krick made his forecast, the Weather Bureau came through with essentially the same forecast."

In the end, however, it was decided that before cloud-seeding was admitted to respectable scientific standing, the National Science Foundation should study it some more