Urban Effects

The effects of cloud seeding on urban areas in North Dakota have not been quantified. While this is an area that certainly deserves more attention, no existing dataset has yet been identified that may prove useful.

Agriculture is still a big part of North Dakota’s economy. When harvest is bountiful, those rural dollars are spent in the cities. This translates into sales of automobiles, trucks, farm implements, appliances, etc. Considerable additional tax revenue is also generated for the state and counties, which adds to those revenues from the urban areas.

The primary impact on urban areas comes in the same form as it does to rural areas – less hail, and therefore less hail damage. Fewer roofs to be replaced, fewer dents to be repaired in automobiles, fewer gardens destroyed. The damage caused by a single severe hail storm passing over a city can easily exceed millions of dollars, where payment of insurance deductibles alone removes millions of dollars from the local economy and damage drives up premiums. As an example, a large portion of the province of Alberta, incorporating the cities of Calgary and Red Deer, has been under hail suppression cloud seeding for the last 25 years to alleviate property damage from hail.