SIMFEROPOL, October 8. /TASS/. The Crimean authorities say they may try to employ modern technologies to cause rain over territories having the worst water supply problems.

“We have a number of programs that may trigger precipitation over certain areas,” Crimea’s acting head Sergey Aksyonov said, adding that the Russian government was assisting the local authorities in research along these lines.

Earlier, Crimea’s Agriculture Minister Nikolay Polyushkin said that the first tests to cause artificial rain might be staged at the end of this year or early next year. He did not rule out re-establishment of the special service commissioned to cause influence of weather processes. He recalled that there had been an effectively operating service back in the Soviet era.

The most widely spread method of causing artificial rain is to spray non-raining clouds with silver iodide. Its tiny particles attract water drops. When the drops get large enough, it starts raining. In Russia such weather management technologies as cloud seeding have been used mostly for improving weather on holidays, when specially equipped planes spray silver iodide, solid carbon dioxide (dry ice) and other components.