A Southern California climate-tech start-up says it has produced an estimated 19 million gallons of additional precipitation over Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula in just three hours, using drones to seed clouds with silver iodide.
The striking claim comes from a research operation conducted by an Alaska based company on 23rd August 2026.
The company says its drone-based system could eventually help increase water supplies in drought-stricken parts of the American West, including the Colorado River Basin and the Great Salt Lake.
Rather than creating clouds from nothing, the technology targets existing clouds containing supercooled liquid water and encourages the formation of ice crystals that can grow into precipitation.
Rainmaker says the Alaska experiment represents an important step towards making cloud seeding more measurable and scalable, although the reported water volume remains a company estimate rather than an independently verified measurement.How Rainmaker’s drone-based cloud seeding system worksRainmaker conducted the operation across seven drone missions, deploying two Elijah autonomous aircraft equipped with silver iodide flares.
