# Snow good editors **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [November 19, 2002, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snow-good-editors/137560 "2002-11-19T17:47:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![NurseCarmen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5daacb/32.png) [@NurseCarmen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NurseCarmen)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2002, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snow-good-editors/137560/1 "2002-11-19T17:47:23Z")
“If you could all the water vapor in a volume of saturated frigid air into snow, you would get less snow than if you did the same thing to a volume of saturated chilly air” _If you could all the water?!?_ Somebody wake up the proofreader. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2002, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snow-good-editors/137560/2 "2002-11-19T18:56:28Z")
They forgot to proofread your post, too ;). If they did, they surely would have noted that the column in question, [Is it ever too cold to snow](http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/msnow2cold.html), is a Staff Report, and not a Cecil’s Column. ---
**Author:** ![Arnold\_Winkelried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2002, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snow-good-editors/137560/3 "2002-11-19T19:06:12Z")
Moving to the appropriate forum. ---
**Author:** ![SandWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8491ac/32.png) [@SandWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SandWriter)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2002, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snow-good-editors/137560/4 "2002-11-19T21:49:40Z")
So, based on the nucleous theory of snow and rain, and that there now exists technology to create nano sized grains of any element, I have a question. Could an evil person seed the sky’s with nano copper or some element and cause all the water vapour to condense and fall out of the sky, removing cloud cover and forcing the earth into an early ice age? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2002, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snow-good-editors/137560/5 "2002-11-20T03:33:25Z")
It doesn’t much matter what chemical you use, aside from its solubility, and some substances, we’ve been able to produce grains of appropriate size for a long time, now. Ever hear of folks “seeding” clouds in a drought, trying to bring some rain? That’s what they’re doing. It doesn’t work too well, and other substances wouldn’t work too much better, but it’s the best we have. ---
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2002, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snow-good-editors/137560/6 "2002-11-20T05:31:01Z")
Now if you look it up in the dictionary, you will find that “could” is the past tense of “can”. So what I was really saying was that if you _canned_ all the water (like my mother used to can tomatoes), then… Oh, wait, I can blame Ed for this one, can’t I? Apparently he liked his nonsensical butchered version better than my original, which was > [@](#): > > So even if you could turn to snow all the water vapor in a volume of saturated frigid air, you would get less snow than if you did the same thing to a volume of saturated chilly air. ---
**Author:** ![SandWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8491ac/32.png) [@SandWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SandWriter)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2002, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/snow-good-editors/137560/7 "2002-11-25T00:23:24Z")
Hey Chronos, I’ve heard of seeding clouds for rain during droughts etc. On the theory that they have to keep seeding the clouds over and over again cause the seeding agent falls out of the sky. With nano size particles, the seeding agent would stay in the sky and do a more complete job of removing all water from the atmosphere. Plus, a ‘buffered’ nano particle could present multiple surfaces for all the different variations of nucleation.