More than 100 people have now been confirmed to have died in the early morning of Friday morning in the mountains of the houses and camps along the edge of the Guadalupe River. Meteorologists who spoke with the online conversation dismissed claims that the National Weather Service failed to accurately predict flood risks in Texas. But within hours of the tragedy, conspiracy theorists, right-wing influencers and lawmakers made crazy claims on social media that floods had geoengineered in some way.
“Fake weather. Fake hurricane. Fake flood. Fake goods. Fake goods. Fake goods. “It doesn’t even seem natural,” Kylie Jane Kremer, executive director of American Women, wrote a 9 million post on X.
As Marjorie Taylor Greene, a U.S. representative for the Georgia Republican, was still responding to emergency floods on Saturday, tweeted that she would introduce a bill to “end dangerous, deadly weather modifications and geoengineering practices.” Green once blamed California wildfires on laser beams or light beams connected to an electric company that allegedly has links to organizations with a powerful Jewish family, and he said the bill would be similar to Florida’s Senate Bill 56, which signed the law in June. The bill makes weather modifications a third-degree felony, with penalties of up to $100,000. (Green’s office did not respond to a request for comment on whether her announcement was particularly associated with the Texas flood.)
On Instagram, Gabrielle Yoder, an influencer on the right, hopped on one of the biggest conspiracy theories, claiming that cloud seeds are responsible for causing floods and specifically appealed to Doricko.
Dodico’s company is also named after Michael Flynn, a former national security adviser on X.
Doricko told Wired that Rainmaker was underway for a brief cloud seeding operation a few days before the storm near the town of Lunger, Texas, about 120 miles away from Kerr County, where the worst was flooding. But Doricko said his staff meteorologists point to some high moisture content in the region. He said the company canceled its business under state regulations.
Cloud seeding (practice of increasing precipitation in the cloud by introducing materials such as iodide or dry ice) has been used for decades. The Texas Department of License and Regulation maintains the pages of current weather modification work for irrigation areas, counties and other groups in the state. Doricko’s company Rainmaker is a buzzing startup designed to “[synthesize] With advanced technology in environmental management. ”
Several meteorologists told Wired that cloud seeds could not have caused the devastating storm in Texas last week.
“In the law of atmospheric chemistry, it is impossible or possible to cause cloud seeds of similar events. [the Texas flooding] The digital meteorologist Matt Lanza said.
The National Weather Service had warned of potential nightly downpours as early as Tuesday, thanks to moisture northward from tropical storm Barry, which landed in Mexico last weekend.
“Meteorological components [for the storm] Already there, cloud seeds can’t work,” Lanza said.
Doricko is no stranger to anti-weather modification factions. He spent much of the year demonstrating a series of national-level anti-geography bills, including those that were eventually passed in Florida.
Doricko’s profile—he used to pose with Bill Clinton and was selected as a Thiel Fellow—think that it made his attacks on the company easier because of those who hoped to fix the plot of devastating storms in Texas.
“I tried to be as transparent as possible because it was a subject of controversy, but it wasn’t actually regulated and transparent as the federal government,” Doricko said. “Just for the record, I’m not a deep state factory in Bill Gates or Palantir, Peter Thiel or Bill Clinton.”
