Serving Garfield, Loup, and Custer counties since 1962 24-Hour Sky Line: (308) 555-0162

Miller & Sons Weather Modification

Rain when you want it. Sun when you don't.

Our story

In the summer of 1962 the county went 74 days without rain, and Emmett Miller got tired of waiting. He borrowed Walt Hagen's crop duster, filled a coffee can with silver iodide he ordered out of a catalog, and came back an hour later soaked to the skin. The Hagens got two inches that night. The Kowalskis, who had laughed at him at the co-op, got nothing, which Emmett always maintained was the weather's own decision.

Word travels fast when a man can make it rain. By 1965 Emmett had a plane of his own, a license, and a waiting list. His son Dale grew the business through the 70s and 80s, adding the ground rigs, the frost work, and the famous gauge policy. These days Dale still runs the office, his boy Randy handles dispatch and the website you are reading, and Randy's brother Kurt does the flying. Emmett is 91 and comes in every morning to look at the radar and say it's wrong.

The coffee can is on the shelf above the coffee maker. We are aware of how that sounds, and we keep them separate.

Emmett, Dale, and Randy Miller posed in the shop office
Emmett, Dale, and Randy, photographed for the company's 60th anniversary. Kurt was airborne, as usual.

The fleet

Unit 1, a ground seeding truck with roof-mounted flare rack
Unit 1, our lead ground rig. Roof rack holds 24 flares, and the dish gets three channels of weather and one of baseball.
Miss Drizzle, the company seeding plane, on the grass strip
Miss Drizzle, flying for us since 1974. Kurt says she has one more decade in her. Kurt said that one decade ago.
The dispatch office with radar screen and shop dog
Dispatch. The radar is new as of 2003. The dog is Radar. He was named before the computer came.
Three generations of Millers in front of Unit 1
Three generations, one sky. Grandpa Emmett is pointing at a cumulus he still claims to recognize.

You may hear folks around town mention Unit 2. Unit 2 has been retired from service and from conversation.

Who we are, on paper

Miller & Sons is licensed, bonded, and insured. We are members of the Tri-County Chamber of Commerce, the Dutch Flats Volunteer Fire Department (Dale, 40 years), and the Nebraska Association of Atmospheric Contractors, which meets annually and is mostly us and a fellow out of Broken Bow we don't care for.

We answer our own phone, we show up when the estimate says, and we clean up our clouds when the job is done. That's been the whole business plan since 1962 and we see no weather on the horizon that would change it, unless somebody pays us to put it there.