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Feedback: Summer 2024

Anonymous — Tue, 16 Jul 2024 06:00:00 +0000

Feedback: Summer 2024 Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 07/16/2024 - 00:00

Fan of the Coloradan

I have wanted to tell you how great the last edition of the Coloradan is. I am an alumni of the class of 1964. I am very impressed with your editing and wanted you to know that and to tell several of the authors their articles were excellent. Lisa Marshall did a good job with her article, “Secrets from the Grave,” interesting. All the articles about the problems with the supply of water to the West were very informative. The short bios of those graduating were good. Elijah did a great job, and you can tell him if you like.

Bill Wilson (A&S’64)
Grand Junction, Colorado

Can’t Argue with Larry Zimmer!

The Coloradan is my favorite of all the magazines and newspapers that pile up around my recliner, and the last to be condemned to the recycle bin on trash day. I have great regard for it journalistically (said the retired journalist) and love the way it conjures up my CU recollections. Most of all I love the size. It’s so little and cute, which totally belies the quality within.

In the Spring 2024 edition, I was amazed and thrilled to see that Larry Zimmer, the late announcer for the Colorado Buffaloes, named the Sept. 24, 1994, “Miracle in Michigan” as his favorite football play out of the 486 CU football games he called over 42 years.

As one of the few CU alums screaming quite unpopularly amid a sea of maize ’n’ blue Wolverine fans in Michigan Stadium that day, I witnessed that miraculous Hail Mary pass from Kordell Stewart to Michael Westbrook. I can never forget how the capacity crowd of more than 100,000 fans sat stock still, stunned, for at least 15 minutes after the game was over. Nobody moved, as if to will the scoreboard back to 26-21 Michigan, where it was six seconds prior to that touchdown.

Thanks for the memories, Coloradan staff.

Jennifer L. Holmes (Edu’67)
Goodison, Michigan

Coloradan vs. Coloradoan

Not at peace with “Coloradans!” I’m a native, born and raised and for 72 years. It’s always been “Coloradoans,” and for me it shall stay “Coloradoans.” I’m trying to cope with all the unrecognizable landscape that surrounds me; and since I can’t halt progress, I shall at least hang onto my Coloradoan roots.

Jennie Schrock

[Editor’s Note: The distinction between Coloradoan and Coloradan is one of our most common questions. We addressed the distinction in our Spring 2019 issue. You can read the digital version here: Origins: Coloradan or Coloradoan?]

Rabbit Holes

Great content on what is one of my favorite rabbit holes to go down, Western water.

David Martus (Rec’88; MBA’97)
Boulder, Colorado

Cloud Seeding

I read with interest the article about cloud seeding in the latest issue of the Coloradan.

I wonder whether Professor Friedrich and the SNOWIE group have looked at the legal implications of their work. Grounds for an article or letter from a prof at the Law School?

Steven Bookshester (A&S’72)
Annapolis, Maryland

A Historical Event

I enjoyed reading about Professor Katja Friedrich and her cloud seeding work. Was 1946 really the year that cloud seeding was discovered? A historical event in San Diego in 1916 comes to mind.

There was a drought, so the City of San Diego hired Charles Hatfield, a former sewing machine salesman, to make rain. Mr. Hatfield built a tower, put a secret blend of chemicals on top and lit the concoction on fire. Fumes rose up into the clouds.

Unfortunately, Mr. Hatfield was too successful. Was it an El Nino year? There was a major flood that killed 22 people in the small city. Mr. Hatfield wisely did not stay around to collect his $10,000 fee.

Irene Eggers (MusEdu’60)
Wheat Ridge, Colorado

Water in the West

I enjoyed reading your article about the challenges of providing water to communities in the Mountain West. As the president of the board of directors for the San Lorenzo Valley Water District in Boulder Creek, California, I have a keen appreciation for the complexities of water supply and distribution. Here on the California coast we have many of the same issues you have in Colorado regarding water rights that in some cases go back to frontier times. Our water resource situation is very different, however. We are able to source our water from stream flow and wells in the local Santa Cruz Mountains, instead of relying upon distant rivers, large reservoirs and melting snow runoff from the Sierra Nevada.

A few challenges we face — winter mudslides and washouts that damage collection points, pipelines and treatment facilities, damage from a major forest fire in 2020 that burned 7 miles of plastic raw-water collection piping in steep terrain, and aging distribution infrastructure. Parts of our system still rely upon old Redwood tanks for water storage, but not for much longer.

Jeff Hill (MBA’72)
Scotts Valley, California

Solar Eclipse, CU Style

Grateful to the clouds for parting a bit for us to experience totality here in Austin. Incredible to see the street lights come on, animals quieted, and experience the moment with our neighbors. CU: Thanks for the glasses! #Eclipse2024 #SolarEclipse #ATX #ForeverBuffs

Elizabeth Eger (Comm, Engl’06; PhDComm’18)
Austin, Texas

Bennet’s Brick Oven

I’m responding to Earl Noe’s (Jour’66) comments in the Spring copy of the Coloradan regarding Bennet’s Brick Oven. I definitely remember eating at this pizza restaurant many times during my four years at CU.

I was a freshman in the fall of 1966 and spent many a time on the Hill eating at the various eateries that were available back then. Bennet’s was located diagonally across 13th St. from The Sink and a few doors up. I originally stumbled onto it and really enjoyed the thin crust pizza that they served. I have many fond memories of the variety of eats there were on the Hill and Bennet’s was one of my favorites. I remember the gentlemanly owner who ran the place. Always had a smile on his face when I came in.

Jim Trotsky (Bus’70)
Englewood, Colorado

Los Seis de Boulder

Thank you for sharing the beautiful sculpture by Jasmine Bates honoring Los Seis in the Spring Coloradan. I am a Class of ’84 Journalism grad and had never heard the tragic story. Maybe the cold case will heat up now.

Tracy Lehr (Jour’84)
Oxnard, California

A Cosmic Surprise

John and I would like to thank you for the genuine eclipse glasses. What a surprise! John graduated in 1959, and I was there two years and loved it. I am 85 and John is 87. We have lived in Dallas for 61 years of our 65 years of marriage. We met at CU and forever hold it in our hearts. Thank you for the reminder.

John Kochan (ElEngr’59) & Pat Wheelis Kochan (Art ex’61)
Dallas, Texas

Correction: In the sports section of the Spring issue, we incorrectly stated that the women’s soccer team made it to the NCAA tournament for the first time in 13 years. It was the first time since 2020. We regret the error.

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Photos courtesy University of Colorado and Elizabeth Eger

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Can Cloud Seeding Stem the Water Crisis?

Anonymous — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 07:00:00 +0000

Can Cloud Seeding Stem the Water Crisis? Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 03/04/2024 - 00:00

Christie Sounart

Katja Friedrich is a professor and associate chair in ��ƷSM��ӰƬ’s Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences department. She is known for her work in cloud seeding, a process used to generate precipitation from existing clouds. In 2017, she helped conduct the National Science Foundation-funded project SNOWIE (Seeded and Natural Orographic Wintertime Clouds: the Idaho Experiment), which was the first experiment to accurately measure the amount of snowfall caused by cloud seeding.

How do you best describe cloud seeding?

Cloud seeding has been around for almost 100 years as a way to get more rain or precipitation out of a cloud. It was first discovered in a lab at MIT in 1946 that something similar to ice’s crystalline structure, like silver iodide, could be put in supercooled liquid to freeze the drops and create ice. People then applied this method to real clouds to generate precipitation. When we seed wintertime orographic clouds, we target clouds that contain supercooled liquid water, which are tiny water droplets that are too light to fall to the ground. After we seed these clouds with silver iodide, the droplets start to freeze into ice particles. These ice particles continue to grow and collect other droplets and ice particles and eventually form snow that is heavy enough to fall to the ground.

Does it work?

A problem with cloud seeding has always been showing how much more precipitation it can generate. We know it works because it works in the lab. However, we need to get the seeding material to the area that contains high amounts of supercooled liquid. It’s difficult to know where those areas are in a cloud, because we don’t have good measurements of supercooled liquid, and it’s difficult to fly in those areas because of aircraft icing. When we seed clouds, we often have to rely on numerical models which have a certain level of uncertainty. Also, once we seeded the clouds, we don’t really know how much precipitation a cloud would have produced without seeding.

The other problem is that nature can be pretty efficient in producing precipitation, but not always. That’s why with our SNOWIE experiment in 2017 we wanted to gather enough information to run more accurate numerical models. Our idea was that because the models are now accurate enough to reproduce what’s going on in the cloud during cloud seeding, we could then run simulations with and without cloud seeding and see the precipitation produced for both. In SNOWIE, we were also able to show with our seeding line observations the entire chain of events from once we put the silver iodide into the cloud to how much snow we produced. No one had done that before.

The reason we are cloud seeding is because of water scarcity.

How much precipitation can one cloud-seeding event produce?

We showed that you can produce additional snowfall. Based on our study that included seeding during three days, the total amount of water generated by cloud seeding was about the equivalent of the volume of water needed to fill 50 Olympic-sized swimming pools in 20 minutes over an area of about 7,500 square kilometers.

What are some concerns you hear about cloud seeding?

The reason we are cloud seeding is because of water scarcity. It is becoming really important to show that we can produce some precipitation. Cloud seeding is not the holy grail if you think about how to generate water or mitigate droughts. But this is an important part because you can maybe produce additional water. I give this example of Lake Mead. Right now, the water levels are so low that hydropower can’t be run at full capacity. If we could cloud seed and raise the water levels just a little bit higher so we can still generate hydropower, this would have massive effects on large populations.

The downside is putting materials in the atmosphere. Other people say we’re manipulating the weather, which is true. The other argument I say is if you get into your car or are flying on a commercial airplane, you are also manipulating the weather. Every airplane that flies through a cloud of super cold liquid is doing cloud seeding because they’re putting particles in the cloud that can generate snowfall. So people need to be aware that we are manipulating the weather and the climate with everything we are doing.

What is one of the most extreme situations in which you’ve conducted research?

We are manipulating the weather and the climate with everything we are doing.

I have gone out for one hurricane, Hurricane Ike in 2008, when I had just started working at CU. This was one of the most amazing things that I’ve seen in respect to the weather. We were on these bridges and you saw the water coming in and everything was flooding around us, and we were in what felt like a carwash. We even deployed through the eyewall — for one hour it was totally quiet, and you could hear birds flying. Then came another five or six hours of this carwash feeling. The hurricane passed, and within half an hour you could see how the water trails out. And then I saw emergency boats coming in looking for people. … As for tornadoes, I have to say they look better on TV than in real life.

What else are you working on right now?

I’m looking at Colorado’s Front Range and other high plateau regions where thunderstorms produce large amounts of hail — so much that we call these hail-accumulating thunderstorms “snowplowable hail.” We built a warning system for the weather service, so they know which thunderstorms are producing a lot of hail that will be dumped on the ground. But also we are trying to understand why that happens and whether there is a way we can forecast it perhaps an hour ahead of time so we can coordinate resources like snow plows, which aren’t always readily available in the summertime.

What do you do outside of work?

When I’m not working, I like to ski. I like to mountain bike. I have two kids, so we are doing a lot of outdoorsy stuff. We like to camp. We like to travel. That’s what we do — things outside.