Could it be true?
Every day between now and the election, Tortoise's Alexi Mostrous will examine a claim from the campaign trail. Some will be outlandish, some believable. Some might even be true.
Gaby Hinsliff, the Guardian political columnist, wrote on X that of all the “mad conspiracy theories” she has heard this election, the “oddest and most persistent” is that Rishi Sunak’s government is “secretly making it rain”. Hinsliff is referring to cloud-seeding, a method of spraying fine powders like silver iodide into clouds to induce rain. Far from a conspiracy, dozens of countries have experimented with the technique. In April, there was speculation that record flooding in Dubai was caused by the UAE flying cloud seeding planes ahead of the rains, although most scientists think that would have had only a small effect. In Britain, the RAF experimented with the cloud seeding as far back as the 1950s. However, while it’s true that the UK suffered a much wetter spring than average, there’s no evidence that the Tories are manipulating the weather for their own purposes. As one wag noted on X, cloud seeding would require a more impressive level of delivery than we’ve seen from Sunak so far.
