At the very beginning of the 20th century, Charles Hatfield traveled across the United States, selling … rain. He was not a crook. He really knew how to control the weather and cause precipitation.
Now I will tell you how it was.
Demand creates supply
Agriculture in America at the beginning of the 20th century is endless corn, potato and cotton fields. The rain that had passed in time made the farmer a rich man; for several months of drought they made him a beggar. When the earth, scorched by the sun, acquired the hardness of concrete, the farmer was ready to pay even an Indian shaman and dance the "rain dance" with him.
In the 1890s, Australian Frank Melbourne successfully traded in rain. The fame of the "rain professor" burst when reporters discovered that Melbourne carried a barometer with him, and a special courier regularly brought him weather forecasts.
Clayton Jewell raised dynamite charges in a balloon into the upper atmosphere, which he detonated there. Rare successes alternated with more frequent failures.
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In contrast, Charles Hatfield has acquired a steady reputation as "lord of the rain."
Wet business
At the end of the 19th century, Hatfield traveled around the States feeding sewing machines and earning $ 125 a month. Along the way, he studied meteorology, physics, chemistry, bought chemical reagents and conducted experiments. His dream was to find a way to artificially make rain and do business on it. This occupation promised him much higher fees than selling sewing equipment.
In 1902, he finally got a secret mixture of 23 chemicals, which he plans to vaporize in large galvanized trays heated from below, which, he says, should cause precipitation in the form of rain. He began by making the usual bets about the weather for the coming days. Send the first money.
Debut
In 1904, Charles decided it was time to put the business on a commercial track. He recruited his younger brother Paul to cooperate and in the midst of a dry summer, he posted an advertisement in several California newspapers at once that for a modest $ 50 the Hatfield brothers would organize rain anywhere in the state. Several desperate farmers chipped in and responded to the ad.
Charles and Paul went to the site, built a 6-meter tower on the mountain and sprayed their powder from it. After 2 days, the heavens tumbled down to earth with life-giving moisture. The happy farmers, who had been guarding the brothers day and night (there will be no rain - so at least we’ll take our souls away), to celebrate, paid the “saviors” not 50, but 100 dollars.
Sell rain
Fame exploded instantly, orders began to arrive in batches from all over California. The state meteorological office tried to blame the success on a cyclone, in response, Charles entered into an agreement with the city council of Los Angeles for the "rain supply", promising to pay a huge penalty in case of failure. Forecasters loudly announced that it would not rain for the next 5 days. However, the next day after spraying the powder, rain poured like a bucket.
Lord of the Rain
Fame grew, fees grew. Hatfield has already signed contracts not only for organizing rain, but also guaranteed rainfall in quantities not lower than the agreed minimum. Sanatorium "Esperanza" laid out $ 1,000 for 46cm. precipitation. The Canadian city of Medicine Hat, under pressure from local farmers, entered into a $ 8,000 contract to "supply" 4 inches (10.16 cm) of rainfall. The rain caused at first drizzled, and then turned into a downpour and several times exceeded the ordered minimum.
In 1928, Hatfield filled Big Bear Lake (California) with rainwater, and a year later extinguished a fire in Honduras.
Charles also had failures. In 1906, the Canadian government signed a contract to organize rain in the Yukon. However, the rain, despite all the efforts of the "lord of the weather" did not start, the deal was canceled.
But Hatfield's biggest failure was in 1916. The San Diego authorities needed to fill a shallow reservoir with water. At the end of December, Charles built several towers, sprayed the mixture, and what do you think happened? Nothing happened?
Worse: Hatfield caused a natural disaster.
Overdid it
On January 5, a downpour fell on the city dried up by the heat, which lasted more than 2 weeks. Both the reservoir and the dried-up river beds were filled. Water overflowed the banks, destroyed bridges, railways, flooded houses and farms. The damage amounted to more than $ 3 million. Instead of paying Hatfield the promised $ 10,000, the authorities sued him for damages.
The lawsuit lasted 22 years and only added to Hatfield's fame. In 1938 he was acquitted, because, according to the judge (attention!), "No man can make rain, it is only in the power of the Almighty" (!)
Dry business
The end of the rain-charmer's career was the Great Depression. Prices for farmers' products fell by 50%, the government, in order to save the agricultural sector, pursued a policy of reducing the amount of agricultural products, reducing the area under crops. The irrigation program has driven the final nail into the coffin of the unique business. Hatfield returned to selling sewing machines.
Charles died on January 12, 1958, without revealing the secret formula of the powder. During his tenure as a "lord of the weather" Hatfield caused more than 500 rains, but scientists do not even put forward versions of how he did it. Charles himself said that he only "helps nature, gives the necessary impetus", but these words do not even give a hint of where to look for a clue.
It is noteworthy that although the fame of this man stretched from Canada to South America, a monument to him was erected in San Diego, where he survived his largest fiasco. On the pedestal there is an unpretentious inscription: “Hatfield. The rain seller.
What does modern science think about the activities of Charles Hatfield?
In 1961, a meteorologist analyzed in detail the weather records for January 1916 from many US weather stations and determined that four weather fronts collided over San Diego, coming from Alaska, from the South Pacific, from the Great Plains of the United States and from Mexico. A rare coincidence led to cataclysms, unusual even for the United States. In natural phenomena of this kind, energies operate, comparable to the energy of the explosion of thousands of hydrogen bombs. It is hardly possible to control them by heating some chemical mixture at the top of the tower.
Back in the 40s of the XX century, serious experiments were begun with the seeding of clouds from aircraft with various substances that could cause the coalescence of small water droplets into large ones, followed by falling. The most commonly used silver iodide and dry ice. The results, as we know from attempts on holidays to "defuse" the clouds before approaching Moscow, are different. The processes going on in the atmosphere, of course, have been studied much better than at the beginning of the last century, but they are too diverse, complex and unpredictable, otherwise we could now, with computers and meteorological satellites, predict the weather much more accurately. Often, as in the case of Hatfield, it is impossible to say with certainty whether the rain fell "on its own initiative." And the cost of aviation flights is not justified by the cost of a possible harvest.
