Texas would transform from a state that licenses and regulates weather modification to one that criminalises it entirely—repealing decades-old cloud seeding statutes while requiring the licensing agency to refund fees to permit holders whose operations would become illegal overnight.
2025 session adjourned 2 June 2025, remained in Licensing & Administrative Procedures committee
While one Texas bill would criminalise weather modification entirely, this companion measure takes the opposite regulatory approach—preserving the existing program but requiring state pre-approval of chemicals and techniques with mandatory exclusion of any substance known to harm human health.
2025 session adjourned 2 June 2025, remained in Licensing & Administrative Procedures committee
Texas's third weather modification bill of 2025 takes a middle path—neither banning the practice entirely nor merely strengthening oversight, but instead creating a public-private divide in which governments are prohibited from atmospheric intervention while private, licensed operators may continue.
2025 session adjourned 2 June 2025, remained in Natural Resources committee
Senator Carona's 2013 rework abandons the county-by-county approach for a regional planning framework, but curiously imposes a geographic restriction: weather modification is prohibited unless regional bodies choose to coordinate it—potentially more restrictive than the licensing system it replaces.
This 2011 Texas bill doesn't ban weather modification; rather, it dismantles state oversight entirely, allowing each of Texas's 254 counties to decide independently whether to regulate cloud-seeding operations.
SB 1374 is the Senate companion to HB 1916, identical in substance—both would have dismantled Texas's state-level weather modification oversight in favour of a patchwork of optional county-by-county regulation.