The Cloudbusters

Ever since they arrived in Medford, Ore. in 1949, ex-Navy Pilots Harvey Brandau and Eugene Kooser have been stirring up clouds of trouble. Flying war-weary fighter planes, they have been "seeding" the thunderheads over Rogue River Valley with a secret formula they called "goop." According to the fruit farmers who have hired the flyers, the seeding causes rainfall and prevents crop-ruining hail. But many of the valley's hay and cattle ranchers feel that the flyers are nothing but cloudbusters, robbing dryland farmers of rain.

At first Brandau and Kooser used silver iodide, sprayed through extensions on their planes' exhaust pipes. Eventually, to cut down expenses, they replaced the iodide with goop which seemed to work just as well. One man, flying high (up to 35,000 ft.) over the tops of thunderheads, seeds them with dry goop. Below the clouds, the other plane sprays a solution of superheated goop. Some ten minutes later, rain usually falls. Hail, so they claim, has no chance to form.

For the first few years, Brandau and Kooser seeded typical hail clouds, and no hail hit the valley's prize fruit. The skeptics called it coincidence. But, after three unspoiled harvests, the skeptics were almost convinced. Then, in August 1952, a hailstorm ripped the pear crop to shreds.

Not our fault, said the pilots: both planes were grounded for repairs. One month later they seeded a sky full of thunderheads. Hail fell again. This time the pilots explained that they had never claimed to have the equipment to handle such frontal storms.

This summer an unpredicted hailstorm hit the valley before the planes could get aloft. But, despite a late start, the flyers did their best. Weather reports showed a change from storm to light rainfall as the two planes shepherded the clouds across the valley.

Cloudbusters or not, the pilots draw substantial salaries, and the fruit farmers pay some $30,000 a year to keep the seeders in the air. But the heated argument goes on, and State Representative Robert W. Root, whose constituents are in both camps, sponsored a bill requiring all weather-tampering experiments to be closely supervised by the state's department of agriculture. Result: Brandau and Kooser are still seeding thunderheads, but they have had to reveal their formula for goop. It is nothing but common table salt.

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