Rainmaking
Encyclopedia
Rainmaking refers to the act of attempting to artificially induce or increase precipitation
, usually to stave off drought
.
In the US, rainmaking was attempted by traveling showmen. It was practiced in the old west
but may have reached a peak during the dust bowl
drought of the American West and Midwest in the 1930s. The practice was depicted in the 1956 film The Rainmaker
. Attempts to bring rain directly have waned with development of the science of meteorology
, the advent of laws against fraud and increased communication technology, with some exceptions such as cloud seeding
and rain dances
or other forms of prayer
, which are still practiced today.
The term is also used metaphorically to describe the process of bringing new clients into a professional practice, such as law, architecture, consulting, advertising, or investment banking - in general, processes that bring money
into a company
.
was a US military rainmaking operation to increase rains over Vietnam
during the Vietnam War
in order to slow Vietnamese military truck activity in the region. China has been seeding clouds for years, while American policy makers and scientists are beginning to take rainmaking seriously once again - they now call it geoengineering
- in the hope of combating global warming (see Guardian 4 November 2009, 'Can we manipulate the weather?').
with which he said he could manipulate streams of orgone energy (which he claimed was a primordial cosmic energy) in the atmosphere to induce rain by forcing clouds to form and disperse. It was a set of hollow metal pipes and cables inserted into water, which Reich argued created a stronger orgone energy field than was in the atmosphere, the water drawing the atmospheric orgone through the pipes. Reich called his research "Cosmic Orgone Engineering."
In 1953, a drought threatened Maine
's blueberry crop, and several farmers offered to pay Reich if he could make it rain. The weather bureau had reportedly forecast no rain for several days when Reich began the experiment at 10 a.m. on July 6, 1953. The Bangor
Daily News reported on July 24 that the experiment had succeeded and Reich had received his fee. Reich was later arrested and convicted for related medical experiments and all his research materials and books were ordered to be burned
by a Maine judge (on request of the FDA
), which was done on August 23, 1956.
used rain dances extensively. European examples include the Romania
n ceremonies known as paparuda
and caloian
. Some United States
farmer
s also attempt to bring rain during droughts through prayer, a phenomenon particularly common in US farming regions. These rituals differ greatly in their specifics, but share a common concern with bringing rain through ritual and/or spiritual means. Typical of these ceremonies was then-governor of Georgia Sonny Perdue
's public prayer service for rain, in 2007.
Precipitation (meteorology)
In meteorology, precipitation In meteorology, precipitation In meteorology, precipitation (also known as one of the classes of hydrometeors, which are atmospheric water phenomena is any product of the condensation of atmospheric water vapor that falls under gravity. The main forms of precipitation...
, usually to stave off drought
Drought
A drought is an extended period of months or years when a region notes a deficiency in its water supply. Generally, this occurs when a region receives consistently below average precipitation. It can have a substantial impact on the ecosystem and agriculture of the affected region...
.
In the US, rainmaking was attempted by traveling showmen. It was practiced in the old west
American Old West
The American Old West, or the Wild West, comprises the history, geography, people, lore, and cultural expression of life in the Western United States, most often referring to the latter half of the 19th century, between the American Civil War and the end of the century...
but may have reached a peak during the dust bowl
Dust Bowl
The Dust Bowl, or the Dirty Thirties, was a period of severe dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to American and Canadian prairie lands from 1930 to 1936...
drought of the American West and Midwest in the 1930s. The practice was depicted in the 1956 film The Rainmaker
The Rainmaker (1956 film)
The Rainmaker is a 1956 film directed by Joseph Anthony and adapted by N. Richard Nash from his play The Rainmaker. The film tells the story of a middle-aged woman, suffering from unrequited love for the local town sheriff; however, she falls for a con man who comes to town with the promise that he...
. Attempts to bring rain directly have waned with development of the science of meteorology
Meteorology
Meteorology is the interdisciplinary scientific study of the atmosphere. Studies in the field stretch back millennia, though significant progress in meteorology did not occur until the 18th century. The 19th century saw breakthroughs occur after observing networks developed across several countries...
, the advent of laws against fraud and increased communication technology, with some exceptions such as cloud seeding
Cloud seeding
Cloud seeding, a form of intentional weather modification, is the attempt to change the amount or type of precipitation that falls from clouds, by dispersing substances into the air that serve as cloud condensation or ice nuclei, which alter the microphysical processes within the cloud...
and rain dances
Rain Dances
Rain Dances is the fifth studio album by English progressive rock band Camel. It was released in 1977, with Deram Records, and brought a major change to the band's lineup, by replacing bassist Doug Ferguson with ex-Caravan Richard Sinclair and by adding saxophonist Mel Collins, former King Crimson...
or other forms of prayer
Prayer
Prayer is a form of religious practice that seeks to activate a volitional rapport to a deity through deliberate practice. Prayer may be either individual or communal and take place in public or in private. It may involve the use of words or song. When language is used, prayer may take the form of...
, which are still practiced today.
The term is also used metaphorically to describe the process of bringing new clients into a professional practice, such as law, architecture, consulting, advertising, or investment banking - in general, processes that bring money
Money
Money is any object or record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts in a given country or socio-economic context. The main functions of money are distinguished as: a medium of exchange; a unit of account; a store of value; and, occasionally in the past,...
into a company
Company
A company is a form of business organization. It is an association or collection of individual real persons and/or other companies, who each provide some form of capital. This group has a common purpose or focus and an aim of gaining profits. This collection, group or association of persons can be...
.
Cloud Seeding
Since the 1940s, cloud seeding has been used to change the structure of clouds by dispersing substances into the air, potentially increasing or altering rainfall. In spite of experiments dating back to at least the start of the 20th century, however, there is much controversy surrounding the efficacy of cloud seeding, and evidence that cloud seeding leads to increased precipitation on the ground is highly equivocal. One difficulty is knowing how much precipitation might have fallen had any particular cloud not been seeded. Operation PopeyeOperation Popeye
Operation Popeye was a US military cloud seeding operation during the Vietnam war to extend the monsoon season over Laos, specifically areas of the Ho Chi Minh Trail...
was a US military rainmaking operation to increase rains over Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
during the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
in order to slow Vietnamese military truck activity in the region. China has been seeding clouds for years, while American policy makers and scientists are beginning to take rainmaking seriously once again - they now call it geoengineering
Geoengineering
The concept of Geoengineering refers to the deliberate large-scale engineering and manipulation of the planetary environment to combat or counteract anthropogenic changes in atmospheric chemistry The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded in 2007 that geoengineering options, such...
- in the hope of combating global warming (see Guardian 4 November 2009, 'Can we manipulate the weather?').
William Reich's Cloudbuster
Austrian-American psychoanalyst William Reich designed a "cloudbuster" in the United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
with which he said he could manipulate streams of orgone energy (which he claimed was a primordial cosmic energy) in the atmosphere to induce rain by forcing clouds to form and disperse. It was a set of hollow metal pipes and cables inserted into water, which Reich argued created a stronger orgone energy field than was in the atmosphere, the water drawing the atmospheric orgone through the pipes. Reich called his research "Cosmic Orgone Engineering."
In 1953, a drought threatened Maine
Maine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
's blueberry crop, and several farmers offered to pay Reich if he could make it rain. The weather bureau had reportedly forecast no rain for several days when Reich began the experiment at 10 a.m. on July 6, 1953. The Bangor
Bangor, Maine
Bangor is a city in and the county seat of Penobscot County, Maine, United States, and the major commercial and cultural center for eastern and northern Maine...
Daily News reported on July 24 that the experiment had succeeded and Reich had received his fee. Reich was later arrested and convicted for related medical experiments and all his research materials and books were ordered to be burned
Book burning
Book burning, biblioclasm or libricide is the practice of destroying, often ceremoniously, books or other written material and media. In modern times, other forms of media, such as phonograph records, video tapes, and CDs have also been ceremoniously burned, torched, or shredded...
by a Maine judge (on request of the FDA
Food and Drug Administration
The Food and Drug Administration is an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, one of the United States federal executive departments...
), which was done on August 23, 1956.
Rain Dances and Prayer
In many societies around the world rain dances and other rituals have been used to attempt to increase rainfall. Some Native AmericansIndigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
used rain dances extensively. European examples include the Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
n ceremonies known as paparuda
Paparuda
Paparuda is a Romanian and Bulgarian rain ritual, probably of pagan origin, performed in the spring and in times of severe drought.A girl, wearing a skirt made of fresh green knitted vines and small branches, sings and dances through the streets of the village, stopping at every house, where the...
and caloian
Caloian
Caloian is a rain ritual in Romania, similar in some ways with Paparuda. It is mostly found in Wallachia . The origin of this ritual, as many other local popular beliefs and practices, precedes the spreading of Christianity, although it was in time associated with the period of the Orthodox...
. Some United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
farmer
Farmer
A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, who raises living organisms for food or raw materials, generally including livestock husbandry and growing crops, such as produce and grain...
s also attempt to bring rain during droughts through prayer, a phenomenon particularly common in US farming regions. These rituals differ greatly in their specifics, but share a common concern with bringing rain through ritual and/or spiritual means. Typical of these ceremonies was then-governor of Georgia Sonny Perdue
Sonny Perdue
George Ervin "Sonny" Perdue III, was the 81st Governor of Georgia. Upon his inauguration in January 2003, he became the first Republican governor of Georgia since Benjamin F. Conley served during Reconstruction in the 1870s....
's public prayer service for rain, in 2007.
See also
- Silver iodideSilver iodideSilver iodide is a yellow, inorganic, photosensitive iodide of silver used in photography, in medicine as an antiseptic, and in rainmaking for cloud seeding.-Crystal structure:...
- Cloud seedingCloud seedingCloud seeding, a form of intentional weather modification, is the attempt to change the amount or type of precipitation that falls from clouds, by dispersing substances into the air that serve as cloud condensation or ice nuclei, which alter the microphysical processes within the cloud...
- Charles HatfieldCharles HatfieldCharles Mallory Hatfield was an American "rainmaker". He was born in Fort Scott, Kansas in 1875 or 1876. His family moved to southern California in the 1880s. As an adult, he became a salesman for the New Home Sewing Machine Company...
- Rain dance
- Rain QueenRain QueenThe Modjadji or Rain Queen is the hereditary queen of Balobedu, a people of the Limpopo Province of South Africa. The succession to the position of Rain Queen is matrilineal, meaning that the Queen's eldest daughter is the heir, and that males are not entitled to inherit the throne at all...
- Business RainmakingBusiness RainmakingBusiness rainmaking refers to generating new business or additional cash flow from sources outside the established or normal business channels. In general, rainmaking is a mindset of delivering value to your customer...
Further reading
- Sanders, Todd 2008. Beyond Bodies: Rainmaking and Sense Making in Tanzania. Toronto, University of Toronto Press
In popular culture
- The video of the song CloudbustingCloudbusting12" single CD single -Charts:-External links:* * *...
(based on the story of William Reich) by Kate BushKate BushKate Bush is an English singer-songwriter, musician and record producer. Her eclectic musical style and idiosyncratic vocal style have made her one of the United Kingdom's most successful solo female performers of the past 30 years.In 1978, at the age of 19, Bush topped the UK Singles Chart...
features Donald SutherlandDonald SutherlandDonald McNichol Sutherland, OC is a Canadian actor with a film career spanning nearly 50 years. Some of Sutherland's more notable movie roles included offbeat warriors in such war movies as The Dirty Dozen, , MASH , and Kelly's Heroes , as well as in such popular films as Klute, Invasion of the...
as an inventor of a rainmaking machine.