Two days before the waters of the Guadalupe River swelled into a deadly and devastating Fourth of July flood in Kerr County, Texas, engineers with a California-based company called Rainmaker took off in an airplane about 100 miles away and dispersed 70 grams of silver iodide into a cloud.
Their goal? To make it rain over Texas — part of a weather modification practice known as cloud seeding, which uses chemical compounds to augment water droplets inside clouds, making the drops large enough and heavy enough to fall to the ground.
But in the hours after the flood swept through the greater Kerrville area and killed at least 135 people, including three dozen children, conspiracy theories began swirling among a small but vocal group of fringe figures.
“I NEED SOMEONE TO LOOK INTO WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS … WHEN WAS THE LAST CLOUD SEEDING?” wrote Pete Chambers, a former U.S. special forces commander and prominent far-right activist, on the social media platform X.
The post received 3.1 million views, yet was only one of several accusations that sprang up around Rainmaker’s activities and its alleged connection to the flood.
“Anyone who calls this out as a conspiracy theory can go F themselves,” wrote Michael Flynn, former national security advisor under the first Trump administration, atop a repost of Chambers’ tweet.
The flurry of allegations was quickly debunked, with a number of independent scientists saying that the company’s actions could not have produced anywhere close to the amount of rain that triggered the flood.
“It’s very clear that they have nothing to do with it,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, in a YouTube briefing following the flood.
Rainmaker also denied the claims. The storm dropped as much as four inches of rain per hour over Texas Hill Country, and the river in some places rose by 26 feet in less than 45 minutes.
But in some ways, the damage was done. Conspiracy theorists who have long alleged that Deep State Democrats are controlling the weather now had a real incident to point to. And researchers, companies and experts working to study and perform weather modification and geoengineering practices — which some say will be needed as climate change worsens — now have an even bigger hurdle to overcome.
END TIMES PROPHECY WATCH 
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