Abstract
THE announcement in the Standard about a fortnight since, that rain had been artificially produced in Texas by exploding oxyhydrogen balloons and dynamite, was probably received by most scientific men with a suspension of judgment. The somewhat sensational form of the report, the emphasis with which it dwelt on the unfavourable antecedent conditions, and the omission of all details that might enable us to form some rough estimate of the forces employed and of the resulting effects, seemed calculated to appeal to the barren emotions of astonishment and love of the marvellous rather than to the sober judgment of well-balanced minds; and but for the fact that the experiments were stated to have been made by the officers of the U.S. Signal Service, which, on the hypothesis of a hoax, would have been a needless challenge to speedy denial, one might have been disposed to regard the story as only an additional instance of a kind of produce for which the Western States are some-what notorious. The further accounts that have now reached us prove, however, that this is not one of Jonathan's amusing attempts to play off on the credulity of his simple-minded cousins across the Atlantic. Not only have experiments of the kind described been actually made, but they have been apparently successful, and they seem to have been repeated sufficiently often to render it at least improbable that this success has been entirely fortuitous. The improbable features of the Standard's report are, indeed, somewhat toned down; the dryness of the local atmosphere was by no means so great as was to be inferred from the vague language of the Standard's informant; but, as far as can be judged from the notices now before us, it seems unlikely that the rain which followed General Dyrenfurth's experiments would have occurred in the undisturbed course of natural events.
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B., H. Rain-Making in Texas. Nature 44, 473–475 (1891). https://doi.org/10.1038/044473a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/044473a0