Rain Dates Nearly 400 battles were fought during the Civil War, though rarely on rainy days, when it was hard to move cannons and horses over soggy ground, Charles Hosler says. Eventually people noticed that it frequently rained after the fighting had ceased. In 1870 a civil engineer proposed that the wartime explosions themselves had provoked the rain, suggesting a key to rainmaking. To test the notion, Congress funded experiments in the 1890s; they failed, and their leader, R. G. Dryenforth, became known as Major Dryhenceforth. Hosler says that since battles were generally fought under rainfree skies, it only makes sense that a rainy day would follow many a sunny-day fight.
Make Mud, Not War In 1966 the 54th Weather Reconnaissance Squadron of the U.S. Air Force engaged in an aggressive cloud-seeding program over North Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. By lacing clouds with silver iodide, the military hoped to extend ...
