Indonesia will carry out cloud seeding in a bid to prevent further rainfall over the capital Jakarta after the death toll rose to 43 while tens of thousands of people have been displaced.
Indonesia will carry out cloud seeding on Friday in a bid to prevent further rainfall over the capital Jakarta, after deadly flash floods and landslides following some of the heaviest rains ever recorded.
The death toll in Jakarta and surrounding areas rose to 43 as of Friday, the country's disaster mitigation agency said, while tens of thousands of people have been displaced.
The toll increased from 30 on Thursday night.
The floods followed torrential rains on Dec. 31 and into the early hours of New Year's day that inundated swathes of Jakarta and nearby towns, home to about 30 million people.
The deluge at the start of 2020 was "one of the most extreme rainfall" events since records began in 1866, the country's Meteorological, Climatological and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) said in a statement on Friday.
The agency said climate change has increased risk of extreme weather.
With more rain forecast, two small planes have been readied to break up potential rain clouds in the skies above the Sunda Strait, while a bigger plane will be on standby, Indonesia's technology agency BPPT said in a statement.
"All clouds moving towards the Greater Jakarta area, which are estimated to lead to precipitation there, will be shot with NaCl (sodium chloride) material," the agency said.
"Hopefully they will break before they reach the Greater Jakarta area."
Cloud seeding, or shooting salt flares into clouds in an attempt to trigger rainfall, is often used in Indonesia to put out forest fires during the dry season.
The BMKG has warned that "extreme weather" may continue until Jan. 7, while heavy rainfall could last through to mid-February. ■
A strong storm that originated over the Pacific has tracked through the Great Basin and is currently transitioning across the Rockies to redevelop across the central High Plains later today into early Saturday morning.