Plane to get rain, villagers wait

Dagde Vasti, 25 km from Baramati, is abuzz with news. The villagers talk of an aeroplane that will take off from Baramati and help to make r...

Dagde Vasti, 25 km from Baramati, is abuzz with news. The villagers talk of an aeroplane that will take off from Baramati and help to make rain. Narayan Dagde does not understand just how it will happen, but as he and his family members gather around a water tanker for their once-a-week supply of water, he is hopeful.

‘‘We haven’t had sufficient rain for the fourth year and this is the tenth month of depending on the tanker,’’ says this farmer whose hopes of a good jowar crop are pinned on that plane.

That plane, a seven-seater Piper Cheyenne expected in Baramati by Friday, is part of the Maharashtra government’s Rs 4.5-crore three-month-long cloud seeding experiment Project Varsha. Meant to cover 73 talukas across seven districts in the state, the project will be carried out with the US-based Weather Modification Inc (WMI) and its Indian representatives, Bangalore-based Agni Consultants.

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There is a sense of urgency in the air. In three days, a 35-feet tall steel tower has been erected atop Vidya Pratishthan’s College of Engineering, Baramati, the ground station for the experiment. This tower will hold the radar meant to track potential seeding clouds. The contract allows for 150 hours of flying.

Michael Johnson, WMI’s radar and avionics technician, said: ‘‘An advanced feature of the radar is its ability to do a computerised volume scan, which slices through each layer of the cloud to check how much integrated liquid water it has.’’

During each sortie, the aircraft will carry 306 ejectibles and 16 flares each of hygroscopic and silver iodide flares. The clouds are seeded by the aircraft using either silver iodide or hygroscopic salts. Once the clouds have been seeded the precipitation takes place within half an hour.