On July 4, just before dawn, the sky over central Texas cracked like a thin sheet of glass. The Guadalupe River\u2014usually calm and lazy\u2014transformed into a rampant beast. In Hunt, a resort town, its level rose by eight meters within 45 minutes. The water came faster than warnings, morning news or any human actions. It flooded makeshift campsites, wooden bridges and dozens of holiday cottages, still filled with luggage. At Camp Mystic, a girls’ camp, at least 27 people died.<\/p>
This was no ordinary flood\u2014it was a trap. Low water crossings turned into deadly gorges, and poor cell phone reception limited the ability to contact the outside world. The rescue operation was a heroic attempt to battle the chaos: with mud, destroyed roads, communication paralysis. The president declared a state of disaster, the governor spoke of hundreds missing.<\/p>
And that number continued to increase.<\/p>
Where human capabilities falter, technology increasingly steps in. GulfSAR<\/strong>\u2014a specialized rescue unit\u2014has employed AquaEye<\/strong>, a modern sonar enhanced by artificial intelligence. The device emits conical sound pulses, which reflect off all objects beneath the water’s surface. AI analyzes these reflections and identifies locations where bodies might be found.<\/p> GulfSAR focuses on the largest debris piles\u2014fragments of bridges, remains of houses that lie along the riverbed. It operates where it’s hardest to reach.<\/p> In the shadow of the tragedy, information panic erupted. On social media, accusations began circulating against the company Rainmaker<\/strong>, whose activities\u2014according to some netizens\u2014brought about a disastrous storm.<\/p> Rainmaker, who specializes in cloud seeding, recently partnered with Atmo<\/strong>\u2014a company that forecasts weather using advanced AI models. Atmo provides atmospheric condition data, and Rainmaker uses it to identify clouds eligible for seeding and then, using drones, “forces” them to precipitate.<\/p> Critics see a conspiracy in this. Could cloud seeding have caused the flood? Scientists agree that it did not. As Bob Rauber (PhD) from the University of Illinois states, such technology increases rainfall by about several percent, but over the course of a whole year. In West Texas\u2014where Rainmaker was active\u2014it means an additional two inches of rain annually. Compared to the billions of gallons of water brought by the storm, it’s barely a drop.<\/p> California is also testing the limits of trust in AI. A chatbot created by Citibot<\/strong>, which was supposed to provide information on fires and evacuations, failed. Its launch was meant to be a symbol of modernity in public administration, but it quickly became an example of its flaws.<\/p> The bot didn’t recognize different versions of the same questions. Only the phrase “What should I have in an evacuation kit?” resulted in receiving a full answer. Differently phrased questions directed users to generic pages or resulted in the response “I’m not sure”. Regarding the question about the Ranch Fire, the chatbot provided information that was extremely outdated (by six days).<\/p> Experts, including from Stanford and Albany universities, emphasize that effective AI must be not only accurate but also predictable. It should also be designed with the involvement of its future users. CAL FIRE has started making corrections analyzing data from queries and updating algorithms. However, the system’s reputation has already suffered.<\/p> In the face of such failures, one might ask: can AI really do more than just analyze texts and images? Despite everything, it turns out that it can. In Europe, a tool is being developed that may truly change the way we forecast weather. A team from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology has created an AI model named spateGEN-ERA5<\/strong>. This is a digital “meteorological microscope” that transforms data from global weather models into detailed precipitation maps with a resolution of 2 km and a time interval of 10 minutes.<\/p> The model is continually learning from German weather radars but is also effective with data from the USA and Australia. Moreover, it generates not just one forecast but a whole range of physically possible scenarios. This is especially important in regions of the Global South where there is a lack of local meteorological infrastructure. As a result, precise risk analysis of flooding or intense rainfall becomes possible, which in the future could prevent disasters like the one in Hunt.<\/p> Artificial intelligence can save lives, but it can also fail\u2014as seen with the information chatbot in California. And although systems are becoming increasingly complex, it is humans who decide where and how they are used. If there is a lack of infrastructure, training, tests and procedures, even the most advanced system will fail. And the price for delayed decisions is paid in names on missing persons lists.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The flood that killed over 130 people in central Texas starkly demonstrated what happens when warnings do not reach where they should. Although data were available, there was a lack of systems that could effectively communicate them. What role can artificial intelligence play in this matter? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":230,"featured_media":12711,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[820],"tags":[841,840,839],"popular":[],"difficulty-level":[36],"ppma_author":[844],"class_list":["post-12743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ai-in-practice","tag-atmo-2","tag-rainmaker-2","tag-weather-ai","difficulty-level-easy"],"acf":[],"authors":[{"term_id":844,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"karolina-ceron-2","display_name":"Karolina Cero\u0144","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/PXL_20250419_110132091.MP4-scaled.jpg","url2x":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/PXL_20250419_110132091.MP4-scaled.jpg"},"first_name":"Karolina","last_name":"Cero\u0144","user_url":"","job_title":"","description":"Wsp\u00f3\u0142tw\u00f3rczyni newslettera AI Flash, studentka psychologii i pasjonatka sztucznej inteligencji. Interesuj\u0119 si\u0119 wp\u0142ywem nowych technologii na cz\u0142owieka, a w wolnych chwilach eksperymentuj\u0119 z generatywn\u0105 grafik\u0105 w Midjourney."}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/230"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12743"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12744,"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12743\/revisions\/12744"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12743"},{"taxonomy":"popular","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/popular?post=12743"},{"taxonomy":"difficulty-level","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/difficulty-level?post=12743"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=12743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}A storm of suspicion \u2013 AI and Rainmaker in the crosshairs of conspiracy theories<\/strong><\/strong><\/h4>
AI doesn’t know where the fire is<\/strong><\/h4>
An artificial intelligence that understands rain<\/strong><\/h4>
Will AI solve the weather problems it supposedly causes?<\/strong><\/h4>