RAIN MAKING.

Waikato Times, Volume 102, Issue 17076, 13 April 1927, Page 3

RAIN MAKING.

USE OF AEROPLANE.

TAPPING THE CLOUDS.

(From a Correspondent.)

LONDON, February 24

Is scientific achievement approaching the point, where it will be able to “make rain” at will or distribute its fall more evenly over wider areas in order to prevent floods? The answer to the riddle, if ultimately found, should certainly benefit Australia, and more particularly Queensland. Scientific minds in ’'‘many countries are closely studying the problem, but the most successful experiment so far is that at Dayton, Ohio, where, from an aeroplane flying above a cloud, electrically charged sand was thrown on to the cloud, thus forcing a fall of rain. Professor A. M. Low, the young British scientist, is confident that science will “eventually obtain partial control over local weather." He does not pretend that rain will be forced to fall from cloudless skies, but he believes that “we may certainly hope to tap rain clouds when rain is needed."

Furthermore, lie thinks “we may find it possible to move rain-bearing clouds from one district to another, thus spreading the rainfall instead of having floods in one part and parched ground in another.” Weather, he tells us, is not some vast atmospherical mass which envelops the earth and travels with it. “Wc are not seeking to remodel the universe, but merely to obtain some control over a purely local condition. We want to spread the patches of rain evenly over the entire surface of the earth." The professor is confident that scientific effort will eventually triumph over the difficulty. Unfortunately he seems to suffer from the defect inherent in nearly all professors—that of theorising without getting down to practical remedies.