Texas Floods: Far-Right Seeded Cloud-Seeding Conspiracies

In early July 2025, Central Texas experienced catastrophic flash floods after heavy rainfall from remnants of Tropical Storm Barry. Over 120 people died, many went missing, and economic damages ran into the billions.

While partisan actors deployed standard denials of the reality that climate change is worsening extreme weather events, the digital conversation on Big Tech platforms was overwhelmed by cloud seeding, an extension of “chemtrail” conspiracy theories. The origin appears to be online conspiracists, but the issue really took off when GOP representatives– including Marjorie Taylor Greene and Michael Flynn– used their political platforms to give credence to it online and garner millions of views on X.

Far-right conspiracists, amplified by high-profile figures, asserted that a cloudseeding program, over 100 miles away, either triggered or worsened the floods, alleging weather control or geoengineering was underway across the state. 

Until or unless Big Tech social media platforms decide to implement information integrity guardrails, the digital discourse will continue to further degrade as they increasingly and intentionally serve as disinformation and propaganda distribution mechanisms.