RAIN AFTER GUNFIRE

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2868, 5 September 1916, Page 6

RAIN AFTER GUNFIRE

THE PROBLEM OF OUR WET DAYS. Has the recent intense gunfire on the British front anything to do with tho abnormal rainfall ? asks the "Daily Mail." Many times during the present war the weather has belied the barometer. With the- mercury standing at a point that has tempted people to leavo homo without even an umbrella there havo been rainfalls of unusual severity, and with theso rainfalls have synchronised heavy uses of artillery at one point or another. This has been noticed in other countries than Great Britain. Telegrams from Potrograd have stated that the heavy Russian cannonading on the Eastern front had been followed by the heaviest of rainstorms. After the recent North Sea battle thero was a heavy rainfall. After naval bombardments of the Belgian coast thero have, been heavy rainfalls.

In Southern India, as Mr. James Stanes, of Marlow, Bucks, has testified, the firing of rockets into rain clouds induced rainfall on many occasions. Do explosions in tho air create rain? The answer of a skilled meteorologist to this question was this:—

"Air explosions do not create rain, but they cause rainfall. If clouds be dry you may fire into them all tho bombs you please without causing rain to drop. Explosions will not create water-bearing clouds. But if within range of the tremor set up by those bombs—and tho range of air disturbance caused by these "explosions is ■under certain atmospheric conditions very considerable—there should be rainhearing clouds, you may causo these clouds to release their water earlier than would havo been the case had thoro been no explosions.

"A sponge full of water moved smoothly through the air may hold all its water without shedding a drop. Shake it and drops will fall. So with rain-bearing clouds. Leave thorn to move steadily through the air and they may carry their water away to the. Atlantic or to China or elsewhere. There they might meet drier air and give some of their water to this drier air. thereby releasing their weight of water, with the result that no rain might fall. Shake them and they may drop their water long heforo this drier air is reached. You maj' say in a word, then, that by intense artillery fire in Europe wo are tending to shake down in Europe water that might otherwise have gone out of Europe. We aro probably robbing other continents of their water, littlo as wo want it."