TAGBILARAN CITY, Bohol—Rounds of cloud-seeding operations have been conducted since Wednesday (January 13) as the planting season starts.
The cloud-seeding team of the Bureau on Soil and Water Management (BSWM) is set to conduct two rounds a day for two to three weeks.
Majority of the farmers cultivating 55,850 hectares (ha) of ricefields—26,151 ha are irrigated and 29,699 ha rainfed—are still in the land-preparation stage as of now that require abundant water supply, according to Larry Pamugas, OIC at the Office of the Provincial Agriculturist.
The BSWM cloud-seeding team started in the morning of January 13 with one sortie, or seeding flight, using 20 sacks, or 500 kilos, of vacuum dried fine salt loaded per flight.
The cloud-seeding team reported to Gov. Edgar Chatto that “seeded areas were east north-east [ENE] of Malinao Dam, ENE of Bayongan dam, Dagohoy, and Alicia agricultural areas. Rainfall occurrence were observed after two to three hours in Pilar, Dagohoy area, Antequera, Maribojoc, Cortes, Corella, Sikatuna, Tagbilaran, Dauis, Panglao, Trinidad and Talibon.”
They were supposed to start the cloud-seeding operations on Monday, but the BSWM team was only able to push through with the cloud seeding on Wednesday.
Pamugas said the BSWM and the Air Force postponed it to January 13 “due to the change of wind direction.”
The wind direction on Tuesday was going east, leaving the areas of interest, which are Malinao and Bayongan, with nothing but blue skies.
The cloud-seeding operations have also been intended for the four major dams in Bohol to store enough rain water—Malinao Dam in Pilar; Bayongan Dam in San Miguel; Zamora Dam in Talibon; and Capayas Dam in Ubay.
Finally, they spotted cumulu-nimbus clouds and monitored the favorable wind direction on Wednesday and pushed through with the cloud seeding.
Pamugas also explained that in the new protocol, the cloud-seeding operations will utilize a two-engine aircraft to be manned by two Air Force pilots.
This is based on the advice of the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines after the incident in Isabela wherein the plane conducting cloud seeding went down due to pilot error.
Leon Parac, agricultural technician of the Office of the Provincial Agriculturist, has been tasked to monitor the seeded areas.