Page 100 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

warning shot, which signaled the men to run to their posts to begin their fusillade
of up to two shots per minute and up to a hundred shots per station per storm.
Although the efficacy of the system was never proved, the kaiser had a favor-
able opinion of it, and the technique spread to nearby countries. Some guns were
sold in northern Italy by 1900, and some insurance companies decided to offer
lower rates to growers within earshot of the hail cannon. Some provincial gov-
ernments provided funds so that towns could appoint a general officer, instruct
the artillerists, test and operate the cannon, and stockpile powder provided by
the military. It was an exciting day in the neighborhood when the hail cannon
started roaring. According to one commentator, the discharge was impressive:
“From the mouth of the cannon issues a mass of heated gas, smoke, and smoke
rings, propelled violently against the lowering cloud . . . like puffs of a locomotive,
but with far greater energy of propulsion . . . a veritable gas attack in the realm of
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the aeronaut.” Even though no ammunition was involved, it was said that the
power of the shot could kill small birds.
In 1907 the American meteorologist Cleveland Abbe, who had been publish-
ing critiques of hail shooting since the turn of the century, reported the demise of
the practice in Italy. A special commission of the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome
had just issued a report that concluded, after testing more than two hundred can-
non and other explosive devices through the course of five summer seasons, that
there was no rational basis for expecting the noise, smoke, heat, or grand vor-
tex rings to have any significant effect on enormous hail-generating clouds that
extended over 30,000 feet in height. The study indicated that the vortex rings
issuing from the hail cannon reached no higher than about 300 feet above the
surface and had no influence on the storm clouds. The commissioners recom-
mended that the Italian government no longer encourage “such expensive and
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useless work.” Although official support waned, the practice lingered, for hope
springs eternal, and on occasion the clouds did disperse following a bombard-
ment. Given the enormous sense of relief felt by the grape growers, it was hard to
convince them that their artillery had not shot the storm away.
Contemporary hail shooters still make noise in farming communities on
the Great Plains of the United States. In the film Owning the Weather (2009),
Mike Jones and his crew discharged a radio-controlled stovepipe-shaped
cannon nestled inside a corral padded with bales of straw. They claimed
that the cannon’s whistling “sonic boom disrupts the formation of hail” and
lessens the chances of its formation. Jones was aware of the checkered his-
tory of this practice, but claimed that a revival was under way because of new
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technologies and “new understanding of the physics involved.” More-
serious scientists were of the opinion that hail shooting gave a bad name to

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