Florida airports must report on ‘weather modification activities,’ attorney general says

ORLANDO, Fla. – Starting Oct. 1, all Florida public airports must submit reports to the state regarding weather modification activities, and on Monday, Attorney General James Uthmeier made sure the airports knew he would be watching.

Uthmeier posted the two-page letter he sent to the state’s airports on X.com.

The letter says that the new Florida law, SB 56, requires the airports to send monthly reports to the Florida Department of Transportation on:

1. The physical presence of any aircraft on public property equipped with any part, component, device, or the like which may be used to support the intentional emission, injection, release, or dispersion of air contaminants into the atmosphere... for the express purpose of affecting temperature, weather, climate or the intensity of sunlight.
2. The landing, takeoff, stopover, or refueling of an aircraft equipped with the components outlined in the requirement on the physical location of the public use airport.

Airports that fail to file the reports could lose state funding.

“We need your help to keep our state free and make sure the skies belong to the people — not to private contractors, corporate experiments or climate extremists," Uthmeier wrote. “In Florida, we don’t jeopardize the public health so that we can bend the knee to the climate cult.”

The Orlando International Airport received the letter.

“Both Orlando International Airport and Orlando Executive Airport received the letter and, of course, will comply with all Florida laws; neither airport performs any geoengineering or weather modification activities, nor are we aware of any activity on airport properties that must be reported at this time,” said spokesperson Angela Starke.

SB 56 was passed by the Florida Legislature earlier this year, then signed by Gov. DeSantis and went into effect on July 1.

The bill bans any sort of weather modification activities, including cloud seeding.

News 6 meteorologist Jonathan Kegges says that is a process that injects particles, often silver iodide, into a small cloud to act as cloud condensation particles, which clouds need to latch onto to produce rain.

But cloud seeding can’t create clouds, and once the cloud goes away, so do the injected particles.

Cloud seeding has primarily been used to get snow to fall in mountainous areas to aid in the creation of a snowpack, or in areas where moisture is needed. A project that NOAA supported to see if cloud seeding could modify the intensity of hurricanes was discontinued in 1982 because it was not successful.

While Florida has required a license for weather modification activities since 1957, the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Ileana Garcia, R-Miami, admitted earlier this year that there had not been a request for a weather modification permit in the past 10 years. According to reporting by the Orlando Sentinel, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection has never received an application for a permit or license.

Garcia has said that the law was supposed to make Florida residents feel more comfortable by believing geoengineering was not happening in the state, and Garcia also said weather modification no longer served a practical purpose.

Nevertheless, Uthmeier, in his letter, mentioned the recent deadly flash floods in Texas, and implied a link between the floods and weather modification because a cloud seeding company was in the area days before the flood.

That company, Rainmaker, was in the area, CEO Augustus Doricko confirmed on X.com. Doricko said the company seeded two clouds on July 2, south of the storm area.

“The clouds that were seeded on July 2nd dissipated over 24 hours prior to the developing storm complex that would produce the flooding rainfall,” Doricko said.

Doricko’s thread of posts included National Weather Service meteorological reports, as well as rules by the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulations that Rainmaker is required to follow.

The area where the July 3-4 flash flood happened, along the Guadalupe River, is known as Flash Flood Alley because of the prevalence of flooding in that area. The Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority says the area is one of the three most dangerous regions in the country for flash floods.

To learn more about weather modification and SB 56, check out this story News 6 wrote last month.