When we first came across this story, we simply did not believe it. Like, you burn a compound into the air and it snows more...surely if it was this simple everyone would be doing it?

But apparently that's what's going on in Vail. In one snowstorm last week, Vail received a foot of snow, Beaver Creek fourteen inches and Aspen nine.Vail Resorts claim that the depth of snowfall benefitted from cloud seeding:

'With individual storms, it can have a 10-20% increase in snowfall,' said Joe Macy, of Vail Resorts. Each winter the company spends $134,000 on its 'cloud seeding program', now in its 23rd year.

The process uses a Bunsen burner type device to burn a silver iodide compound into the atmosphere about 10 miles upwind of the two resorts. The theory is that moisture clings to the iodide particles and it falls as snow.

To the uneducated mind (like ours) this sounds similar to the way that acid rain works. Surely there must be an enviromental impact?  Macy claims that only 'a relatively small percentage of the moisture that passes over falls as additional snow. We are by no means sucking all the moisture out of the clouds.'

Although only four Colorado resorts participate in cloud seeding (Telluride, Durango, Vail, and Beaver Creek), many water districts across the country rely on it for increased precipitation. Both Nevada and Utah have also operated cloud seeding programs for the last 26 years. The focus of the programs is not actually ski areas, but water runoff for agricultural use.

[We found this story at SkiNet.com - The USA's leading Ski website. They have assured us it is not an early April Fool.]