Weather & Forecasting · Recorded milestone

Cloud seeding

Recorded year1946

Vincent Schaefer at General Electric drops dry ice into a cloud over Massachusetts and makes snow; Bernard Vonnegut soon finds silver iodide works too.

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Built on

All-metal aircraftRecorded · 1915enables
Home freezerRecorded · 1940enables

Led to

First sanctioned geoengineering field testForecast · ~2029enables
AI-targeted cloud seeding dronesForecast · ~2030enables
Cloud-brightening fleetsForecast · ~2072enables

Sources & evidence

Additional source

Dataset updated 2026-10-18. This individual record has not been separately re-reviewed.