Speaker 1: You're listening to American Shadows, a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: radio and grim and mild from air and minky liquid water.
Speaker 1: It sets our magnificent blue planet apart from others in
Speaker 1: our solar system. True, Venus and Mars both had water
Speaker 1: at some point, but evaporation turned them into toxic, airless deserts,
Speaker 1: void of life. And yet somehow Earth's water didn't evaporate.
Speaker 1: It's why there's life on this big blue marble we
Speaker 1: call home. Without water, most plants other than cactuses die
Speaker 1: within a week. Humans in most other animals perish in
Speaker 1: three or four days. Entire civilizations have thrived because of
Speaker 1: water or ceased to exist without it. And since not
Speaker 1: every community lived near running water, they depended on rain.
Speaker 1: From Sudanian Savannah to the American planes, animals have followed
Speaker 1: the rains and humans migrated with them. Without life giving rain,
Speaker 1: plants would die and the animals that the humans depended
Speaker 1: on went elsewhere. In the American Southwest, summers are dry.
Speaker 1: Native American people's like the Hopie, Mojave and Pueblo once
Speaker 1: performed rain dances every year. To this day, some still
Speaker 1: recreate these traditions. The clothing singing and intricate movements were
Speaker 1: hoped to please the gods in descending rain and rainmaking
Speaker 1: rituals have been practiced around the world. Rain has been
Speaker 1: considered sacred, as have the practices and people who helped
Speaker 1: control it. Unless sometimes those people were women. You see
Speaker 1: for a while during the Little Ice Age. In some
Speaker 1: European cultures, women who attempted to alter nature were thought
Speaker 1: to be up to nefarious purposes. It was the devil's doing,
Speaker 1: their persecutors set women, being the weaker sex, were easily
Speaker 1: tempted by Satan, and any use of spells, potions, or
Speaker 1: dances to alter the weather would only end in disaster.
Speaker 1: If there was a hail storm, snowstorm, or torrential rains
Speaker 1: that threatened life, clearly which was at fault, and thousands
Speaker 1: of women were killed for it. Historians have noted that
Speaker 1: over fifty thousand executions occurred in Europe alone. In an
Speaker 1: old German would cut a woman practicing witchcraft is clearly
Speaker 1: depicted her crime conjuring and enormous hail storm. Later European
Speaker 1: men took to the craft. Although the art was considered
Speaker 1: more scientific and a whole lot less satanic, they were
Speaker 1: looked upon as heroes and innovators, even when things didn't
Speaker 1: turn out quite the way everyone hoped. It's been several
Speaker 1: hundred years since switches were first accused of meddling with
Speaker 1: the climate. Since then, we've often tried to improve upon
Speaker 1: nature in other ways that don't include elaborate dances or spells.
Speaker 1: But despite our advances in technology, when it comes to
Speaker 1: controlling the weather and our intentions for doing so, the forecast,
Speaker 1: it seems is cloudy. I'm Lauren Vogelbaum. Welcome to American Shadows.
Speaker 1: In the late seventeen hundreds, American citizens mostly lived within
Speaker 1: fifty or so miles of the Atlantic Ocean, something President
Speaker 1: Thomas Jefferson wanted to end. If American settlers didn't expand
Speaker 1: out west, he feared that the English would. His vision
Speaker 1: was to spread people over the land far and wide,
Speaker 1: and within two years he convinced Congress to support an
Speaker 1: expedition toward the Pacific Ocean. To kick things off, he
Speaker 1: sent Captain Merryweather Lewis and Second Lieutenant William Clark on
Speaker 1: their epic journey starting in eighteen o three. Part of
Speaker 1: their duties, aside from determining the economic preten shoal of
Speaker 1: the land they explored were scientific. Along the way, the
Speaker 1: men were to journal everything they encountered, from identifying plants
Speaker 1: and animals to notes on the geography. Climate was important too.
Speaker 1: Settlers would need to know how the weather might affect
Speaker 1: growing seasons. When Lewis and Clark first laid eyes on
Speaker 1: what they called the Great American Desert, they deemed it
Speaker 1: unfit to live on. The land was parched as far
Speaker 1: as they could see. The local Native American people's didn't
Speaker 1: stay there year round. They only passed through following the Bison,
Speaker 1: the modern name of that area Nebraska. Prairie grass and
Speaker 1: other short grasses grew, of course, but nothing like back east,
Speaker 1: where grasses rose taller than a wagon wheel. Years later,
Speaker 1: when the rains did come to the dry plains, it
Speaker 1: softened the earth's baked soil. By the eighteen eighties, the
Speaker 1: Great American Desert would disappear from the nation's maps. Though
Speaker 1: many avoided the area, it didn't stop settlers from head west.
Speaker 1: The Homestead Act of eighteen sixty two promised cheap land
Speaker 1: to those willing to colonize it, at just a dollar
Speaker 1: per acre. Men and women packed up everything they had
Speaker 1: and moved west. Farmers were soon raking in money from
Speaker 1: their corn fields. Ranchers raised large herds of cattle. Before long,
Speaker 1: relatives back east headed out to join them. Life was good,
Speaker 1: but the rain didn't stay, and without it, vegetation became scarce.
Speaker 1: No rain meant dead crops and starving livestock. These new
Speaker 1: settlers may have learned how to work with the normal
Speaker 1: weather patterns, but they didn't know about a weather event
Speaker 1: called El Nino, and so, like generations of people the
Speaker 1: world over, they went for a different approach, the idea
Speaker 1: that two observed events were related, regardless of the logistics.
Speaker 1: Simply put, for them, correlation was causation. While they didn't
Speaker 1: believe deities or which is were the cause of droughts,
Speaker 1: they did believe in remedy that didn't if you'll pardon
Speaker 1: the pun hold water. Early settlers had conquered the land,
Speaker 1: so now it was time to conquer the skies, and
Speaker 1: all they had to do, according to scholars, both ancient
Speaker 1: and modern, was shaped the rain loose from the clouds.
Speaker 1: One such scholar was the Greek philosopher Plutarch, who once
Speaker 1: noted that soon after great battles, the rains came. He
Speaker 1: was uncertain whether some divine power sent the rains to
Speaker 1: wash the blood from the earth, or if the steaming
Speaker 1: blood itself caused condensed air. For a while, people believed him. Surely,
Speaker 1: Plutarch's writings explained the storms that hindered the Spanish Armada
Speaker 1: and caused the mudded waterloo that contributed to Napoleon's downfall.
Speaker 1: Oddly enough, Napoleon himself disagreed with Plutarch. Instead, he believed
Speaker 1: it was ammunition that led to rainfall. In thirty one,
Speaker 1: the French fired thousands of shops into the sky, hoping
Speaker 1: to release rain from the clouds. Forferring to it as
Speaker 1: the percussion method, and French wineries claimed to have some
Speaker 1: success using it. Many people assumed that if it could
Speaker 1: work in the vineyards of France, it would work on
Speaker 1: the dry plains in the American Southwest. Droughout ridden farmers
Speaker 1: were willing to try anything. After all, what did they
Speaker 1: have to lose. Even Lewis and Clark believed in the
Speaker 1: percussion method, history was chock full of battles taking place
Speaker 1: during the rain. Lewis once wrote he had even witnessed
Speaker 1: rain falling after heavy artillery blasts during the Civil War.
Speaker 1: For Lewis, these concurrences simply added up to fact. In
Speaker 1: an article appearing in the American Journal of Science and
Speaker 1: Arts in eighteen sixty one, he stated, the discharge of
Speaker 1: heavy artillery at contiguous points produces such a concussion that
Speaker 1: the vapor collects and falls generally in unusual quantities the
Speaker 1: same day or the day following. There had been recent
Speaker 1: data to back the theory up to one. Edward Powers,
Speaker 1: an engineer in Chicago, had interviewed thousands of Civil War
Speaker 1: soldiers from both sides. He had documented hundreds of battles
Speaker 1: that have been fought in the rain, proving that gunfire,
Speaker 1: either by concussion or percussion, brought on the precipitation that
Speaker 1: day or at least within two days. But battles weren't
Speaker 1: the only way to bring down rain, and Mother nature
Speaker 1: had built in protection, Powers claimed, and he stated so
Speaker 1: in his book titled War and the Weather. He wrote
Speaker 1: that burning large swaths of forest would also bring down
Speaker 1: fire quenching rains. Fortunately, the U. S. Government didn't agree
Speaker 1: with his theory when he proposed that they burned down
Speaker 1: forests to induce rain. But while Powers Lewis, Clark, and
Speaker 1: others passed off correlation as scientific proof. Meteorologists themselves weren't
Speaker 1: buying it. The South was the wettest part of the country,
Speaker 1: and with or without battles, rain fell often. Powers was
Speaker 1: an engineer. Lewis and Clark were explorers and soldiers. None
Speaker 1: of them understood science as it pertained to meteorology, but
Speaker 1: desperate times often lead people to believe in things that
Speaker 1: normally don't make sense, and if the scientists who studied
Speaker 1: weather couldn't make it rain, that turned people who promised
Speaker 1: they could enter. Charles Benjamin Farwell, a U S Senator
Speaker 1: with the Texas Ranch in eighteen ninety he pushed bill
Speaker 1: approving a nine thousand dollar budget on rainmaking efforts using
Speaker 1: the concussion method. On the day of the experiment, no
Speaker 1: one checked with the meteorologists or bothered with the weather report.
Speaker 1: No newspaper reporters were there to witness the test, though
Speaker 1: they were quick to publish the results afterward. According to
Speaker 1: The Washington Post, after setting off an explosion, torrential rain
Speaker 1: fell for nearly twenty minutes. The New York Post reported
Speaker 1: that the explosion caused rain to fall for six hours
Speaker 1: over a thousand square miles about twenty hundred square kilometers.
Speaker 1: Farwell had been the only one overseeing the project, and
Speaker 1: on his word alone, the experiment was passed off as
Speaker 1: credible scientific fact. The following year, Congress, once again ignoring scientists,
Speaker 1: approved an additional ten thousand dollars for more experiments involving
Speaker 1: the concussion method. Governments im parched places like Nebraska and
Speaker 1: Kansas attempted to blast rain from the skies using tons
Speaker 1: of dynamite. Though the experiments didn't produce much in the
Speaker 1: way of rain, officials reported great success to the newspapers.
Speaker 1: Between notable historic figures, politicians, and the press, the stage
Speaker 1: had been set for Charlatan's to take advantage of the public,
Speaker 1: and one in particular had been paying very close attention.
Speaker 1: His wiry five foot nine frame didn't do much to
Speaker 1: command anyone's attention. His hair could be as unruly as
Speaker 1: the weather, and he frequently swept a curl from his forehead.
Speaker 1: His voice was soft enough that others often assumed he
Speaker 1: was shy or awkward, or both. Other times, though, when
Speaker 1: someone got him talking about the weather, his excitement caused
Speaker 1: his striking blue eyes to light up and his words
Speaker 1: to flow with hurried confidence, spewing technical jargon and data
Speaker 1: that few could keep up with. That didn't stop them
Speaker 1: from hanging on his every word, though, from farmers to politicians,
Speaker 1: people loved him, and his fan base stretched across four continents.
Speaker 1: But he wasn't a movie star, and it wasn't his
Speaker 1: looks that drew people. Though the smile he presented so
Speaker 1: often was infectious. If asked, people would say Charlie Hatfield's
Speaker 1: greatest assets were his enthusiasm and charisma. Magazines and newspapers
Speaker 1: wrote extensive articles about him. His quiet confidence and exploits
Speaker 1: were the subject of political and scientific debate. He wasn't
Speaker 1: the only one in his feet, but he was certainly
Speaker 1: the best. After all, he had been practicing his art
Speaker 1: since he was a boy on his parents ranch. You see,
Speaker 1: Hatfield was a rainmaker, and either he truly knew how
Speaker 1: to make it rain, or he knew how to convince
Speaker 1: people that he did. He had what others in his
Speaker 1: profession did not, because on top of all that charisma
Speaker 1: and self assuredness, Hatfield was also quite knowledgeable when it
Speaker 1: came to the weather. It had started out as a
Speaker 1: side hustle he had made a reputation among the local
Speaker 1: southern Californian ranchers for bringing in much needed rainfall, But
Speaker 1: it wasn't until nineteen o four, at the age of forty,
Speaker 1: that he was able to leave behind his job as
Speaker 1: a sewing machine salesman to make a small fortune as
Speaker 1: a rainmaker. And all of it started with a bet.
Speaker 1: That year, the city of Los Angeles was suffering through
Speaker 1: an extreme drought that had begun years earlier. Hatfield travel
Speaker 1: to the city with an offer he would make it rain,
Speaker 1: just like he had for the ranchers farther south. Hatfield
Speaker 1: was clear that he didn't have luck on his side.
Speaker 1: He had knowledge. He understood a lot about the climate,
Speaker 1: including something known today as the el ne Neo Southern
Speaker 1: oscillation or end SO, a complex system of weather patterns
Speaker 1: rotating between warm and cool ocean currents the causes a
Speaker 1: shift in the atmosphere. This process, along with strong trade winds,
Speaker 1: impacts weather on a global scale, and when Hatfield made
Speaker 1: the bet with city leaders, he had warm weather l
Speaker 1: NENO on his side, along with a mountain of Weather
Speaker 1: Bureau reports. The regular rainfall rarely exceeds eight or ten inches.
Speaker 1: He told city officials. I cannot make it rain. I
Speaker 1: simply attract clouds and they do the rest. There must
Speaker 1: be some moisture in the air for me to work with.
Speaker 1: Had city officials understood and so that have known that
Speaker 1: the average rainfall was fifteen inches in an al neno year. Instead,
Speaker 1: all they knew was the city had experienced a severe
Speaker 1: drought and they needed to do something. They put their
Speaker 1: trust in Hatfield because he didn't offer them potions and promises. No,
Speaker 1: he offered them what other Charlatan's had not, scientific data
Speaker 1: and a special blend of twenty three chemicals he claimed
Speaker 1: could literally milk the clouds of rain. Being a salesperson,
Speaker 1: Hatfield also understood marketing and making a happy customer. He
Speaker 1: was more than willing to back up his claims, so
Speaker 1: he made the city a bet they couldn't turn down.
Speaker 1: Give him five months to produce eighteen inches of rainfall.
Speaker 1: If he could uphold his end of the deal, they'd
Speaker 1: pay him a thousand dollars And if you're wondering, that's
Speaker 1: somewhere around twenty thousand today. Not a bad paycheck. When
Speaker 1: it was over, the results spoke for themselves. Hatfield had
Speaker 1: exceeded all their expectations, and the city happily paid up instantly.
Speaker 1: Charlie the Rainmaker became front page news. By nineteen fift
Speaker 1: Hatfield had seventeen contracts under his belt, from Texas to
Speaker 1: Alaska and places in between. His photo appeared in papers
Speaker 1: and magazines as far away as Cape Town, South Africa.
Speaker 1: In London, England, they had nicknames for him to the
Speaker 1: Cloud Compeller, God of Plenty, First Lieutenant to Jupiter, and
Speaker 1: Professor Hatfield. While other rainmakers had long given up the
Speaker 1: trade and their sneak oils, Hatfield was thriving. As demand
Speaker 1: for his services increased, so too did his fees, upwards
Speaker 1: of four thousand dollars for four inches of rain and
Speaker 1: sub instances. And the thing is it rained every time. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe not exactly on a particular day, but Hatfield kept
Speaker 1: his word and met his deadlines, often exceeding them, and
Speaker 1: to some it seemed Hatfield could sweet Mother Nature into
Speaker 1: whatever he wanted. When the city of San Diego suffered
Speaker 1: a significant drought in nineteen fift Hatfield happened to be
Speaker 1: in town, so he offered his services, and, like the
Speaker 1: other jobs had been hired to do in the past,
Speaker 1: the city felt they had nothing to lose, after all,
Speaker 1: they would only pay if it rained, and the city
Speaker 1: officials were desperate. The Marino Reservoir was barely at one
Speaker 1: third capacity, and the demand on the water supply was
Speaker 1: growing with the ever increasing population. When Hatfield gave them
Speaker 1: his enthusiastic dattle laden pitch, every city leader was on board,
Speaker 1: well all but one. That is. One official named Herbert
Speaker 1: Faye called the whole thing foolish. He was outvoted, though,
Speaker 1: and Hatfield got the job. The new year had barely
Speaker 1: been rung in when Hatfield set to work. In January
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixteen, he built a twenty foot tower sixty
Speaker 1: miles deep in the woods. He had finished, he climbed
Speaker 1: the tower and poured his special chemical brew into iron
Speaker 1: pans and set the concoction on fire. Those curious enough
Speaker 1: to follow Hatfield reported that the smell was bad, like
Speaker 1: the fumes from a Limburger cheese factory had been let loose.
Speaker 1: Hatfield climbed the tower and repeated the process every few hours,
Speaker 1: and the rain had promised showed up within days, making
Speaker 1: good on his word to bring in enough rain to
Speaker 1: fill the morain in reservoir. True to his reputation, Charles
Speaker 1: Hatfield had exceeded their expectations. The trouble was San Diego
Speaker 1: had no idea just how devastating that would be. The
Speaker 1: rains came lightly at first, then increased steadily over the
Speaker 1: next two weeks. Elated people cheered. Newspapers posted the in
Speaker 1: news rainmaker hat Field induces clouds to open by January, though,
Speaker 1: rains of biblical proportions deluged the city in the mountains.
Speaker 1: On the outskirts of San Diego, sees of rain pummeled
Speaker 1: the landscape, causing landslides. The downpour quickly overwhelmed the San
Speaker 1: Diego River too. The resulting floods swept away everything in
Speaker 1: their path, telephone lines, roads, homes, the entire community of
Speaker 1: Little Landers. Now the rains weren't just hitting San Diego.
Speaker 1: The entire coastline experienced similar rainfall and flooding. While some
Speaker 1: speculated that Hatfield couldn't have affected the weather that far
Speaker 1: up the coast, others offered a different take. One man
Speaker 1: who had to be rescued by rowboat told first responders,
Speaker 1: let's pay Hatfield ten thousand dollars to quit. The comment
Speaker 1: didn't phasee hat Field though the San Diego Union printed
Speaker 1: his response a day later. In the next few days,
Speaker 1: I expect to make it really rain. Clearly Hatfield had
Speaker 1: to be joking. San Diego no longer needed rain. In fact,
Speaker 1: it was imperative that it stopped. Yet when officials pressed,
Speaker 1: his blue eyes shone with that trademark enthusiasm never more
Speaker 1: serious in my life. He said, just hold your horses
Speaker 1: and I'll show you a real rain. And rain it did.
Speaker 1: I suppose Hatfield was lucky not to be born a
Speaker 1: German woman in the fourteen hundreds. If he had, the
Speaker 1: following events would surely have gotten him hanged for witchcraft.
Speaker 1: The rainfall, already at record levels, kept increasing. Valley windmills
Speaker 1: resembled water wheels. Gas supplies couldn't be delivered. The Santa
Speaker 1: Fe train station ground to a halt, and telephone lines
Speaker 1: were swept away, cutting off communications. If all that wasn't
Speaker 1: bad enough, there was about to be more bad news.
Speaker 1: The Lower O Tai dam soon gave way. One worker
Speaker 1: who had watched it break open raced to warn the
Speaker 1: local ranchers nearby. Before he could, though, a wall of
Speaker 1: water forty ft tall crashed into the valley. He scrambled
Speaker 1: to climb a tree, but the rushing water swept him
Speaker 1: from one tree to another before the trees also broke loose.
Speaker 1: After dumping over thirty inches of rain, the storm finally ended.
Speaker 1: That January became the wettest month on record, and the
Speaker 1: damage was catastrophic, with the death poll of fifty human lives.
Speaker 1: Martial law prevailed in the valleys, and the U. S.
Speaker 1: Marines were brought in with orders to shoot looters on site.
Speaker 1: Naval ships were required to ferry people and supplies back
Speaker 1: and forth from the city. Thankfully, the Merino Reservoir held,
Speaker 1: but barely. Soon enough, residents began calling the disaster Hatfield's flood.
Speaker 1: Despite the destruction, though, Charlie seemed pleased, and now that
Speaker 1: the reins had ended, he set out on foot for
Speaker 1: a sixty mile hike to collect his pay. After all,
Speaker 1: he had upheld his end of the bargain, and now
Speaker 1: it was time for the city to do the same.
Speaker 1: As he might imagine, he ran into a problem with
Speaker 1: that the city officials had hired him. That much was true,
Speaker 1: that had an agreement, but only a verbal one, and
Speaker 1: although Hatfield had made good on his word, the city
Speaker 1: now faced lawsuits, lots of them. The plaintiffs argued that
Speaker 1: Hatfield had acted on the city's behalf and that he
Speaker 1: had caused the disaster, not in mother nature. If the
Speaker 1: city paid Hatfield for his services, they claimed, they would
Speaker 1: be taking responsibility for all those losses. When Hatfield objected,
Speaker 1: the city officials pointed out the contract had never been signed,
Speaker 1: making it void. They also wanted Hatfield to prove the
Speaker 1: rains weren't an act of God and that he alone
Speaker 1: had caused the rain. They did, however, offered to pay
Speaker 1: the ten thousand dollars if Hatfield accepted responsibility for the damage.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's no surprise that Charles refused their offer.
Speaker 1: Angry and upset, he sued the City of San Diego.
Speaker 1: It would take twenty two years, but the case would
Speaker 1: eventually find its way into court, where it was quickly dismissed.
Speaker 1: Charles Hatfield was never paid a single dime for his
Speaker 1: efforts there, and you'd think after those catastrophic results, other
Speaker 1: cities would refuse to hire him. But hire him they did.
Speaker 1: From nineteen sixteen through the nineteen thirties, Hatfield found plenty
Speaker 1: of employment both locally and internationally, and The press continued
Speaker 1: to report on his successes. Cuba and Honduras contracted him
Speaker 1: to douse forest fires that were threatening valuable banana crops.
Speaker 1: The New York Times wrote a out his trip to Italy,
Speaker 1: where it was said Hatfield explained his secrets to the
Speaker 1: Pope so that the pontiff could induce rain over Vatican gardens. Alberta, Canada,
Speaker 1: contracted him for five inches of rainfall. Hatfield built a
Speaker 1: tower bigger and taller than had ever done before, drawing
Speaker 1: not only hordes of spectators but a movie crew to
Speaker 1: document the event. He put on a show, too, often
Speaker 1: climbing the tower eight times a day to cook his
Speaker 1: chemical concoction. Eventually, the rains came five inches of rainfall,
Speaker 1: to be exact. Delighted, Alberta paid Hatfield handsomely for his help. Afterwards,
Speaker 1: scientists and other observers pointed out that Alberta typically received
Speaker 1: six inches of rainfall yearly on average, not five. Alberta
Speaker 1: had just paid Hatfield the biggest check of his career,
Speaker 1: all for an inch less of rain than normal. The
Speaker 1: era of the rainmaker couldn't last forever, though. Civil engineers
Speaker 1: designed dams and that meant better water management during the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties dustable era. Hatfield fans were unsuccessful in persuading
Speaker 1: President Franklin Roosevelt to send the rainmaker to the hard
Speaker 1: hit planes. Even when the city of San Diego suffered
Speaker 1: another dry spell, they quickly refused Hatfield services, although they
Speaker 1: did briefly consider hiring a different rainmaker. With his best
Speaker 1: days as rainmaker behind him, Charles Hatfield slipped from the
Speaker 1: public eye. Without contracts, he was forced to return to
Speaker 1: his previous line of work as a sewing machine salesperson.
Speaker 1: Not long after that, his wife divorced him. No one
Speaker 1: heard from Charles Hatfield for years until nineteen fifty six,
Speaker 1: when Hollywood made a film based loosely on his life.
Speaker 1: It starred Burt Lancaster in the leading role alongside Katherine Hepburn.
Speaker 1: It was nominated for three Golden Globes. Two years after
Speaker 1: the film's release, the city of San Diego tried to
Speaker 1: contact Hatfield for a documentary on the flood that had
Speaker 1: hit the city years before, but Hatfield didn't answer. He
Speaker 1: couldn't easy. Four months earlier, in January of night he
Speaker 1: had quietly died alone and his home in pair Blossom California,
Speaker 1: at the age of eighty two that May. After learning
Speaker 1: about his death, journalists put him in the papers once more.
Speaker 1: The headline for the Washington Post read Charles Hatfield, the
Speaker 1: Rainmaker dies in obscurity. No reporters or die hard fans
Speaker 1: were present on the day Charles Hatfield was laid to
Speaker 1: rest at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale. In fact,
Speaker 1: in an ironic twist of fate, the man who had
Speaker 1: made a career out of filling the sky with everything
Speaker 1: a city needed to beat the heat failed to take
Speaker 1: advantage of its final audience. There wasn't the cloud in
Speaker 1: the sky. There's more to this story. Stick around after
Speaker 1: this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. Curious
Speaker 1: Orville Wright walked to the window of his office and
Speaker 1: McCook field, the airfield operated by the United States Army
Speaker 1: Air Service, was home to aviation experimentation. He knew the
Speaker 1: sound of every plane except the one he had just heard,
Speaker 1: so he glanced out the window, which gave him a
Speaker 1: clear sightline of the thousand foot runway, the hangars, and
Speaker 1: all the engineering labs. He had seen a lot of
Speaker 1: planes over the years, each designed for different purposes. Many
Speaker 1: of those projects had begun right on this particular airstrip too.
Speaker 1: Agricultural researchers had come up with the aid to drop
Speaker 1: insecticide directly onto crops from low flying planes, and thanks
Speaker 1: to aviation, meteorologists could now take their instruments up into
Speaker 1: the clouds. And it was this sort of plane that
Speaker 1: caught his attention that warm summer day in two His
Speaker 1: brother Wilbur had been gone nearly ten years, but if
Speaker 1: he had been there that day, he would certainly have
Speaker 1: been as amazed as Orville. Older. Now with his signature
Speaker 1: mustache graying and trimmed of its gravity defying curls, Orville
Speaker 1: stared out the window at the wonder in the sky.
Speaker 1: The plane, a French built loop hare, disappeared into one
Speaker 1: of the many clouds dotting the sky. When it re emerged,
Speaker 1: a long tail of smoke trailed behind it. No, he thought,
Speaker 1: not smoke. The plume was some sort of dust. The
Speaker 1: plane circled and disappeared into the cloud once more. All told,
Speaker 1: he watched it make six passes through the cloud before
Speaker 1: banking and vanishing into another dense cloud to the left
Speaker 1: of the first, and with each passed through the clouds
Speaker 1: began to fade. By the time the little plane had
Speaker 1: moved on to the third and fourth, the first cloud
Speaker 1: had vanished. Orville Wright, the man who had made aviation
Speaker 1: history with his brother at Kitty Hawk, had just witnessed
Speaker 1: America's first attempt to control the weather by plane. The
Speaker 1: men behind the experiment where businessman Luke Francis Warren and
Speaker 1: a Cornell University chemist named Wilder Bancroft. Warren and Wright
Speaker 1: had a lot in common. Both were entrepreneurs, and both
Speaker 1: were fascinated with inventing. Right long since sold his airplane
Speaker 1: business for the tidy sum of one and a half
Speaker 1: million dollars and had dedicated his life to inventing things
Speaker 1: rather than running a business. Warren wasn't as wealthy as Right,
Speaker 1: but money was certainly on his mind. You see, Warren
Speaker 1: aspired to cash in on heading up the first company
Speaker 1: to manufacture rain. His scientists knew a thin films surrounded
Speaker 1: negatively and positively charged droplets of water inside clouds, a
Speaker 1: one that prevented the tiny droplets from collecting into larger ones,
Speaker 1: which formed rain. But they had a theory that if
Speaker 1: they dusted the clouds with electrified sand they could induce rain,
Speaker 1: and airplanes made the whole thing possible. Bancroft and Warren
Speaker 1: convinced the U. S. Army Air Service to provide not
Speaker 1: just funding, but essential pilots and planes too. The pilots
Speaker 1: would fly into cumulus clouds and eject the sand through
Speaker 1: a special shoot. Although the trials didn't produce a single
Speaker 1: drop of rain, one Navy commander marveled at the disappearing
Speaker 1: clouds and wondered if the U. S. Navy Bureau should
Speaker 1: buy the technology from Warren and Bancroft. But after ten
Speaker 1: years of fruitless trials, everyone associated with the project lost
Speaker 1: and it's funding stopped. That didn't mean people stopped trying, though.
Speaker 1: Wartime in the nineteen forties ramped up a different need
Speaker 1: for controlling the weather. The Allies faced danger from electrical
Speaker 1: storms that could knock out radio communications, as well as blizzards, hail,
Speaker 1: and torrential rains. Soon the War Department set up shop
Speaker 1: at the Mount Washington Observatory in New Hampshire. A scientist
Speaker 1: working on a hot July day stashed dry ice in
Speaker 1: a cloud chamber and then watched as crystals formed. Millions
Speaker 1: of them. After experimenting, he learned that even the tiniest
Speaker 1: speck of dust would cause the same results. All the
Speaker 1: droplets really needed, it seems, renuclei to cling to the result,
Speaker 1: depending on the temperature, was either snowflakes or rain drops.
Speaker 1: The Times loved the news, reporting that a piece of
Speaker 1: dry ice the size of a pea would be able
Speaker 1: to make millions of tons of snow. To test it,
Speaker 1: the War depart Mint sent a plane into a cloud
Speaker 1: over Mount graylock A November ninety six. Once inside the cloud,
Speaker 1: the plane unloaded six pounds of ice pellets. Within seconds,
Speaker 1: the cloud erupted with ice crystals, and snow fell from
Speaker 1: the skies over three mile path. Requests, mostly well intentioned,
Speaker 1: flooded the scientists. A search and rescue teams thought clearing
Speaker 1: away clouds could aid them in their work. The Kansas
Speaker 1: State Chamber of Commerce wanted to use the technology to
Speaker 1: end droughts, and Hollywood wanted it on the technology to
Speaker 1: believing they could use it to create weather on a
Speaker 1: film set. There was another use, though, the military. Manipulating
Speaker 1: the weather could become a weapon as powerful as any
Speaker 1: atomic bomb, just without the radioactive aftermath. Dumping snow on
Speaker 1: airstrips or causing mud slides near a target would certainly
Speaker 1: hinder the enemy. Even today, the U. S. Air Force
Speaker 1: still keeps tabs on emerging technologies and we're guards to
Speaker 1: using the weather to wage war, and naturally its uses
Speaker 1: spread to the civilian side of life. As recently as
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, Beijing wanted to manipulate the weather
Speaker 1: to provide the best possible conditions for the Olympics, and
Speaker 1: in Florida, one company created a powder that turns into
Speaker 1: a gel and bragged that their product had the ability
Speaker 1: to weaken a hurricane. But the most prominent use of
Speaker 1: weather altering technology before the U N prohibited it, that is,
Speaker 1: would have to be during the Vietnam War. Between nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven and ninety two. The Air Weather Service used
Speaker 1: the technology to seed clouds in an effort to reduce
Speaker 1: traffic along the Ho Chi Min Trail. The project was
Speaker 1: a secret to most Americans, and many who did know
Speaker 1: about it questioned it for being so unusual, but supporters
Speaker 1: were quick to point out how much more humane a
Speaker 1: bit of rainfall was compared with deadly chemicals like napalm MHMM,
Speaker 1: all of which was summed up nicely in the unofficial
Speaker 1: motto that people in the program were known to proclaim,
Speaker 1: make mud that'd say not War. American Shadows is hosted
Speaker 1: by Lauren Vogelbaum. This episode was written by Michelle Muto
Speaker 1: with researcher Robin Miniter, and produced by Miranda Hawkins and
Speaker 1: Trevor Young, with executive producers Aaron Minky, Alex Williams, and
Speaker 1: Matt Frederick. To learn more about the show, visit Grim
Speaker 1: and Mild dot com. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts.