PORTALJABAR, BANDUNG CITY - The West Java Provincial Government in collaboration with BMKG and the Indonesian Air Force continues to carry out weather modification operations until March 20, 2025.

According to the West Java BPBD Young Expert Disaster Analyst Edwin Zulkarnain, OMC was carried out in response to the increasing incidence of hydrometeorological disasters.

Several areas such as Bogor and Bekasi have declared emergency response status, while BMKG predicts that moderate to heavy rainfall will continue throughout March.

"Through OMC, we hope to reduce the intensity of extreme rainfall so that disaster-prone areas can be better prepared to accommodate rainfall without experiencing severe impacts," said Edwin Zulkarnain, Thursday (13/3/2025).

OMC is used to modify rain. The method is to spread special materials into clouds that have the potential to produce heavy rain. This seeding is done using aircraft that fly to certain points that have been monitored beforehand.

The materials used in cloud seeding are generally sodium chloride (salt) or other hygroscopic materials. These materials help speed up the formation of water droplets in clouds, so that rain falls more quickly or in safer locations, such as at sea.

"This OMC is not to eliminate rain completely, because that requires a lot of power. However, through proper seeding, we can reduce extreme rainfall in areas prone to flooding and landslides," explained the Head of the BMKG Central OMC Engineering Team, Bayu Prayoga.

During the operation, the aircraft seeded the clouds three times a day. BMKG acted as the main supervisor in determining the cloud growth points that were the target for seeding based on radar monitoring and satellite imagery.

The pilot and technical team from the Indonesian Air Force ensure that the seed material is optimally distributed. In this way, rain can be diverted and dropped in safer places, such as at sea.

Bayu asserted that OMC rainwater is not harmful to the environment and humans. Seeding only changes the physical process of clouds without affecting the chemical properties of rainwater.

"The rainwater produced by OMC is the same as natural rain. We also routinely conduct laboratory tests to ensure this," said Bayu.

He responded to public concerns about the potential for tidal flooding due to OMC. According to him, tidal flooding is more influenced by astronomical factors such as high sea levels, not by rain resulting from seeding.

"OMC does not cause tidal flooding, because rain that falls in the sea will spread over a wide area. Tidal flooding occurs due to tidal factors originating from the natural cycle of sea water," he said.

By the third day of implementation, OMC had succeeded in bringing down rain at sea so that the rainfall reaching land was reduced in intensity.

Officers at the Husein Sastranegara Command Post continue to monitor and evaluate the seeding results in real time.

Each day, after the last flight, the team conducts analysis and designs a seeding strategy for the next day.

The team in the field works intensively to ensure that operations run according to plan and provide maximum impact for disaster mitigation.

"This is a real manifestation of cross-sector cooperation in anticipating the impact of disasters. We hope that the public can understand that OMC is one of the solutions to mitigate disaster risks amidst high rainfall," concluded Bayu Prayoga.