For years, there have been plenty of conspiracy theories about the government building machines that control the weather, be it via cloud seeding or Nikola Tesla's weather weapon HAARP.

Though it might sound like the type of exaggerated conversation piece reserved for 4Chan or niche forums, weather control processes are very real.

For example, during the 2008 Beijing Olympics China shot thousands of rockets into the sky that deployed silver iodide and dry ice into the clouds, sparking a storm to erupt before it could travel over the Opening Ceremonies. Pretty soon, though, the United States might be using similar methods to control the skies, but with the help of drones.

According to an article in AccuWeather, the Federal Aviation Administration picked six test sites throughout the US in December 2013 to try out drone-based cloud seeding. The goal was to make weather control operations more cost-efficient and easier than, say, blasting thousands of fuel-guzzling rockets into the troposphere.