Recast Emerges from Stealth with Precision Weather Modification Technology to Give Communities Real Control Over Weather Outcomes
The company's sensing and modeling layer quantifies cloud seeding's impact, bringing measurement and accountability to a field with historically limited data. It plans to expand operations into new states, begin manufacturing its proprietary seeding material, and launch a first-of-its-kind research campaign on responsible flood prevention.
SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 12, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Recast Systems, a next-generation weather company building hardware, biological, and software solutions for precision weather modification, today emerges from stealth. The company currently operates rain enhancement missions across four regions of Texas and New Mexico, using specially modified cloud seeding aircraft that quantify how much rainfall each mission produces and feed that data back into improving future missions.
As extreme weather intensifies, communities worldwide are increasingly exploring cloud seeding to protect water supplies, support agriculture, and improve drought resilience. The 70-year-old technique, which aims to increase a cloud's ability to produce rain or snow, is deployed by 40+ nations and supported by a substantial body of scientific research. It works, but there's a critical gap: cloud seeding operators have lacked the measurement and modeling capabilities to demonstrate its impact—how much rainfall a single mission produced, or what seeding caused versus what would have fallen naturally. In the United States, that gap has kept ROI approximate and largely confined cloud seeding to rain enhancement.
Recast was built to close it. The company's end-to-end operating system combines proprietary, traceable, biologically derived seeding materials with proprietary sensors that track the material through a cloud system and monitor atmospheric conditions. This data informs and optimizes AI weather models, creating a feedback loop that allows operators to quantify what was produced in real time and continuously optimize future targeting.
By unlocking that level of precision, Recast ultimately aims to evolve cloud seeding beyond rain enhancement, enabling applications like flood mitigation and hail suppression—use cases previously out of reach without the tools to understand and control what's happening inside a cloud.
"Extreme weather displaces families, disrupts harvests, and devastates communities. Our ability to understand and act on the atmosphere hasn't kept pace with how much damage it can cause," said Olivia Li, Founder and CEO of Recast Systems. "The natural next step beyond forecasting extreme weather is having the infrastructure to actually change its outcomes. That's what we're building, and that's what gives communities real, precise control, instead of just watching and hoping."
Inside Recast's Weather Operating System
Recast approaches weather modification as a full-stack engineering problem, integrating proprietary hardware, software, and biological technologies into a single operating system:
- Hardware: Specially modified cloud seeding aircraft paired with proprietary atmospheric sensors form the backbone of Recast's sensing layer. The technology is also deployment-agnostic; rather than being confined to specific hardware, Recast builds whatever aircraft, drone, ground-based generator, or rocket-based system the science calls for.
- Software: Recent progress in AI plus cost reductions in hardware manufacturing now make it possible for Recast to track water droplets converting into ice crystals in real time, feeding a weather operating system that models atmospheric conditions and directs field operations.
- Biological: Recast's new seeding material, currently in testing, is an organic and natural alternative, designed to be more efficient than the industry-standard silver iodide, which has been used for cloud seeding for roughly 40 years. Silver iodide causes ice crystals to form at approximately -8°C, well above the -40°C at which water freezes without any catalyst; Recast's natural material achieves ice formation at approximately -3°C. The company runs summer and winter operations, and the same natural material causes rain formation in warm clouds through a separate process, enabling cloud seeding year-round in a broader range of geographies.
Recast in Action: West Texas and New Mexico Deployments
Recast's current projects are in partnership with the Roosevelt Groundwater Conservation District, the West Texas Weather Modification Association, the Trans-Pecos Weather Modification Association, and the Rolling Plains Weather Modification Association. Its collaborators—which also include Seeding Operations and Atmospheric Research (SOAR), Cloud Seeding Technologies, and Texas A&M—work primarily with agricultural landowners and mineral rights holders whose operations depend on groundwater.
"A growing number of water districts need more than a seeding contractor. And they need another way to actually verify what they're getting," said Carlon Stapper, President of the West Texas Weather Modification Association. "Recast's approach to measurement, when fully developed, will give our members a level of accountability this industry hasn't had before."
Recast plans to expand operations into new states over the next year, begin manufacturing its proprietary seeding material for use in live operations, and launch a research campaign focused on flood prevention. For the first time in the field, this would test whether precision seeding can be used to responsibly decrease rainfall in flood-prone conditions.
"This is a truly revolutionary research initiative," said former NOAA Administrator Rear Admiral (ret.) Tim Gallaudet, Ph.D. "Recast Systems is harnessing the full power of AI to not merely predict flooding, but actually prevent the loss of life and property caused by it—nothing in weather research could be more important."
Learn more about working with Recast at www.RecastSystems.com.
ABOUT RECAST SYSTEMS
Recast Systems is a weather company building physical sensors, AI weather simulations, and new materials to perform precise weather modification. Founded by Olivia Li, the company operates across Texas and New Mexico in partnership with regional water districts and weather modification associations, combining proprietary traceable seeding materials, atmospheric sensors, and machine learning models to quantify the impact of cloud seeding with a precision the industry has not previously had. Recast is based in San Francisco, CA. Learn more at recastsystems.com.
MEDIA CONTACT
Tess Pawlisch
608-333-9788
[email protected]
SOURCE Recast Systems
Share this article