§ Mr. J. Morrisonasked the Undersecretary of State for Air if he will make a statement in regard to the proposed Government experiments in making artificial rain in the Salisbury Plain area.
Mr. WardI hope that it will be possible to hold the first trials during the spring. Although for various technical reasons Salisbury Plain may prove the most suitable area, the districts affected will depend upon the prevailing wind and may be as much as 50 miles away from the experimental site: they will cover only a small part of the country. I should emphasise that there is no question 63W of changing fine weather into rainy weather by these experiments: they will be conducted in cloudy weather and the most that can be expected is some increase in the amount of rainfall. This, if it occurs, will be detectable only by careful measurements over long periods of time.