MAKING RAIN

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 671, 25 October 1933, Page 3

MAKING RAIN

VVEIRD SCHEMES YARIOUS EARLY METHODS PROYED SCIENTIFICALLY IMPOSSIBLE. ASSISTED BY GOOD FORTUNE. To force those tantahsing high clouds which mock the settler in droughts to disgorge their rain! It looks an ea'sy job,. but it has baffled the best white man's br'ains to date, says the Sydney Daily Telegraph. In fact, a bribe to the nearest black wizard for a ,potent "magic" to comi pel the showers to fall has an equal chance of success. Europe has had a dry spring and summer — long, parched periods inter- ! spersed with violent storms — and Ausj tralians are wondering whether the ' southern seasons will repeat oldworld conditions. A fair amount of ; rain has f-allen here so far. j Any person able to control rain at ' will — [bring it down or hold it off — would soon become a millionaire. As if is, many have made (or are still making) money out of weird schemes, which are little more than scientific hocus-pocus. I Back in the nineties of last century there were famous rainmakers (such as "Professor Post"), who used to . hold "bombing seances" with small cannon fired towards the clouds in various localities, where a fee was paid. Luck played a big part in the sucesses elaimed. The theory was exploded by scientific experiments which proved that, even if dynamite bombs were exploded right inside clouds by time-fuse balloons, the rain did not reach the earth. In the 1903 drought an other typs of rainmaking was tried at Broken Hill. In a large number cf open tubs broken-up zinc was mixed with dilute { sulphuric acid. Great quantities of I hydrogen gas fornnd, which, being \ lighter than air, rushed up into the j sky. I The idea was that vortices of gas would form, displacing the clouds violently. While it is possible such a plan might work if on a big enough scale, the effect at Brok. n Hill was 1 nil. ! Vortex guns — small cannon firing blanks which produce- rings of smoke I — are often used by rainmakers. An | Australian inventor in pre-war days | vainly tried to get his vortex-gur j method sanctioned by various State | Covprnmt nts. i Vortex-guners still earn jobs in | Europe and America, firing blanks ; "to avert hail" from orchards. crops, and vines. Within the last few years l rockets have superseded guns, but ; scepties say the process is more or • less a "faith cure." I A more promising method of rain- ' making was discovered in 1923. Try- | ing to clear fog off landing grounds, American aviators discovered that ; clouds could be dissipated by scatter- ' ing electrically-charged sand into them. But, as a deluge-producer, the scheme is a f ailure. To form, one inch cf rain over one acre iv.ci i-'S half a ton of charged sand, and this rain is in such small drops that it does not reach the ground. If some way of getting higger drops were possible, the method would be a pronnsing one, for it reproduce-s whafc happens in natural rainfall; that is, moisture condenses on dust high up in the atmosphere. But in a real c'.ri-.ught the moisture (wntr vapour; is not there, so that the catcb is in the s-tart of ' the recipe, "First catch your cloud." So up to the present the scientist seems to have little advantage over the savage rammaker, who scores a similar number of successes or blanks, according to luck. The latter can point to the t3vrfic deluge which b">*oke up a Queeusla-.id drought, after an aboriginal had caRed at a Bnsbanc newspaper offce and related that a big-feller rainmaking had been cainred out by a tribal med.-cine-man. ' he ensuing downp"ur was so tr"-. u : dous that i steamer wa- '> a-h." 1 c 1 re and lect !ii'-h ar:d dry in the Botanic Gardens.