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Meteorology may have come a long way since its inception, but it is not possible for anyone — whether it be the government, scientists or billionaires — to control the weather, according to experts.

The desert region of Dubai received a record-breaking amount of rain — two year’s worth in 24 hours — in April. Ever since, every time a flash flooding event occurs, ABC New Chief Meteorologist and Managing Editor of the ABC News Climate Unit Ginger Zee has been receiving messages on social media from people who claim the sharp increase in precipitation is not the result of nature.

“They are making it rain” is the overall theme of the conspiracy theories Zee keeps hearing about.

The commenters are often referring to cloud seeding, a weather modification technique currently used in the United Arab Emirates and several places in the U.S., mostly in the Western U.S., a region notorious for its pervasive droughts. The geoengineering technology involves injecting microscopic particles — sometimes silver iodide — into the atmosphere to encourage rain and snowfall.

The particles then act like magnets for water droplets and bind together until they are heavy enough to fall as rain or snow, amplifying the amount of precipitation. But the water droplets can’t be made out of nothing — it has to be already raining or snowing for cloud seeding to take effect.

For the last several decades, there have been investments in small-scale cloud seeding operations in pockets in the West, both ground-based and in the air, Brad Udall, senior water and climate research scientist at Colorado State University, told ABC News.

Despite feats in geoengineering, humans have no capability whatsoever to control the weather, Andrew Dessler, director of the Texas Center for Climate Studies, told ABC News.

“Until recently, we weren’t even sure it worked,” Udall said. “But there’s some new science that suggests, yes, you can slightly increase the precipitation out of storms due to these, usually ground-based, but sometimes air-based efforts.”

Cloud seeding can increase seasonal precipitation by about 10%, according to the Desert Research Institute (DRI).

A 10-year cloud seeding experiment in the Snowy Range and Sierra Madre Range in Wyoming resulted in 5% to 15% increases in snow pack from winter storms, according to a 2015 report from the Wyoming Water Development Office. In the region around Reno, Nevada, cloud seeding is estimated to add enough water to supply about 400,000 households annually, according to the DRI.

While humans can enhance existing weather, it is not possible to control it, Dessler said.

“We humans are not powerless,” Udall said. “But, unfortunately, in the weather realm, our ability to affect things is pretty minor.”

Cloud seeding can’t make it rain. It can’t even make a cloud, according to Zee. And it certainly is not being used to create storms with enough precipitation to cause flash flooding.

If humans could control the weather, then the megadrought in the West would probably never had persisted at the level that it did for decades, Udall said.

In late September and early October, Google searches for cloud seeding ramped up again as Hurricanes Helene and Milton caused severe destruction far beyond the storm’s direct impact, including flash flooding in the mountain region near Asheville, North Carolina, previously considered a climate haven.

While there is some evidence that cloud seeding can enhance precipitation, it’s impossible for humans to create or steer a hurricane, Dessler said.

“It’s amazing we’re even having this discussion because, of course, humans can’t control the weather in ways to create a hurricane,” Udall said.

However, there has been a larger-scale climate modification that has been ongoing for the past two centuries, Zee said.

“We’re doing that right now with green with enormous greenhouse gas emissions on a scale that humanity has never, ever done before,” Udall said.

Since the Industrial Revolution began in the late 1800s, the greenhouse gases emitted from the extraction and burning of fossil fuels have been causing global temperatures to rise at unprecedented rates, according to climate scientists.

The amplification of Earth’s natural warming has actually increased hourly rainfall rates — a key factor in flash flooding — across much of the U.S. by 10% to 40%, according to Climate Central.

“We have all contributed to making it rain more and heavier as we warm the planet,” Zee said.

Dessler likened global warming to “steroids” for extreme weather events.

“Steroids don’t hit a home run, but if you give steroids to a baseball player, he’s gonna hit more home runs,” Dessler said. “And that’s essentially, you know, the way to think about humans and the weather.”

The experts urged people to not believe rumors on the possibility that the weather can be controlled, chalking up the conspiracy theories as machinations of intrigue but nothing more.

“It’s yet one more example, right, of unbridled social media doing irreparable social harm,” Udall said.

ABC News’ Daniel Manzo contributed to this report.

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(STARR COUNTY, Texas) — A Texas official, who this week offered the incoming Trump administration a 1,402-acre plot of land to build “deportation facilities,” says other parts of Texas near the border could be offered up in a similar fashion.

“Absolutely — I have 13 million acres, if any of them can be of help in this process, we’re happy to have that discussion,” Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham told ABC’s Mireya Villarreal in an interview.

The Texas General Land Office purchased the plot of land from a farmer in October originally to facilitate Texas’ efforts to build a border wall. Together with this land, the state office owns about 4,000 acres in Starr County, about 35 miles from McAllen, Texas.

“My office is fully prepared to enter into an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or the United States Border Patrol to allow a facility to be built for the processing, detention, and coordination of the largest deportation of violent criminals in the nation’s history,” Buckingham wrote in a letter addressed to President-elect DonaldTrump, earlier this week.

In an interview via Zoom, Buckingham claimed authorities were frequently “getting reports from the community” that crimes were happening on the property.

“There was a significant mass of humanity and terrible things happening on this property. We heard it again and again and again,” she said.

Buckingham placed the blame squarely on what she called the Biden administration’s “open border policies” and said the county voted Republican for the first time in a century because residents there felt those policies are “directly harming their communities” and jeopardizing their safety.

During the interview, Villarreal noted she had been speaking with residents and community leaders in the region who paint a different picture of the area, one of a safe community that does not have the violent crime that Buckingham has described.

When asked by Villareal to provide details of where those crimes are occurring, Buckingham said most of the migrants are passing through and, using some of the same rhetoric about migrants and crime used by President-elect Donald Trump on the campaign trail, said they “unleash some of their violent criminal habits” in other states across the country.

“Well, a lot of it is migrant-migrant crime, but you’re right, the communities along the border are lovely,” she said. “The people who live there are lovely. Obviously, most of the migrants who come across aren’t interested in sticking around too long. They go to other parts of the country, as we have seen in faraway states — people who came across the Texas border — and then tend to unleash some of their violent criminal habits in other states.”

She added, “But the bottom line is, until we have complete operational control of the border, until we have these violent criminals off of our soil that continue to hurt our sons and daughters, we need to keep working on it and get it done.”

In 2023, in the same county where the Texas commission recently bought the 1,402-acre plot of land, the Biden administration announced it had authorized building about 20 miles of southern border wall using money that was already appropriated under the first Trump administration.

President Joe Biden at the time claimed he had no choice to build the wall, which directly contradicted a promise he made during his 2020 presidential run.

“I tried to get them to reappropriate — to redirect the money,” Biden told reporters at the time. “They didn’t, they wouldn’t. And in the meantime, there’s nothing under the law other than they have to use the money for what is appropriated. I can’t stop that.”

After that announcement, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said there was an “immediate need to construct physical barriers” in the area.

Buckingham said she’s confident she’ll hear back from the incoming Trump administration about her offer of land.

“We have heard through back channels that they’re aware of our letter and they are definitely looking at it,” she said.

Incoming “border czar” Tom Homan, in an interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham, indicated the incoming administration would be open to using the land Texas is offering.

“Absolutely we will,” he said, adding that when they arrest a migrant, they’ll need a place to detain them.

Democratic governors of border states — such as Arizona and California — have said they will not aid the Trump administration’s mass deportation plans.

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs told ABC News Live earlier this week that she would not use state police or the National Guard to help with mass deportation.

ABC News’ Mireya Villareal contributed to this report.

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(ORLANDO, Fla.) — At least two people are dead and six others have been injured in a Halloween night shooting in downtown Orlando, police said.

Police in Orlando, Florida, first received reports of a shooting at around 1 a.m. and immediately responded to the scene, the Orland Police said in an early morning press conference on Friday morning.

Authorities confirmed that at least two people were killed and six others have been injured in the shooting and that a 17-year-old suspect was taken into custody.

The victims were taken to hospital and range in age from 19 to 39, according to the Orlando Police Department.

Authorities also said there were approximately 100 officers working the downtown area at the time of the shooting.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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