Justin Key Canfil
On summer nights as a child at my grandmother’s house in rural west Texas, I’d sometimes stay up, in defiance of my bedtime, for Art Bell’s Coast to Coast AM, the radio show that made “chemtrails” a household word. So-called “chemtrails”—actually contrails—are the long white plumes of ice crystals that form behind passenger jetliners when hot engine exhaust meets sub-zero air in the upper atmosphere, a well-understood physical process. But “chemtrail” conspiracists believe they are chemicals dispersed as part of a secret government weather-control program. Back then, the idea felt fringe; by 2016, polls found nearly one in six Americans buy into it.
Conspiracy theories are on the rise everywhere, and last month’s Texas Hill Country floods, which caused more than 130 deaths, were no exception. On July 4, heavy precipitation caused the Guadalupe River to rise more than 25 feet in less than an hour. In addition to the death toll, the storm is estimated to have caused at least $18 billion in damages. Even before the water had stopped rising, rumors about the storm’s origins began swirling online. Many conspiracy theorists blamed a small California-based startup called Rainmaker Technology, which acknowledged having conducting cloud-seeding operations in Texas two days prior.
Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), a longtime promulgator of weather control conspiracy theories, was quick to latch onto the allegations. As fatalities continued to climb on July 5, Greene posted a photo of Rainmaker’s CEO, Augustus Dorick, and called for national legislation to make weather modification a felony offense. Anticipating blowback, the Texas Department of Agriculture quickly released a statement disclaiming any government involvement, and the Environmental Protection Agency launched two websites to counter weather control disinformation.
However, in a public address on July 10, EPA head Lee Zeldin implied that Greene’s suspicions were “legitimate,” stating that the EPA “shares the significant reservations many Americans have [about] geoengineering activities.” While tragic, the floods were hardly suspicious. For outsiders, Texas often conjures images of cacti and tumbleweeds. But Texas is no stranger to flooding. Often called “Flash Flood Alley,” Central Texas has had more flood fatalities since 1959 than any other US state. The July 2025 floods were caused by the remnants of Tropical Storm Barry off southeastern Mexico, as was conclusively shown by radar imagery.
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