Fixing the Sky (14 page)

Describing his scheme as an “advanced step” in the science of “meteorological engineering,” Ruggles appealed, unsuccessfully, to the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture for $10,000 in support of his rainmaking experiments. A Civil War veteran who had witnessed major battles with no rain at all wrote in a letter to
Scientific American
that if cannon explosions in a battle do not cause rain, Ruggles's patent balloon will not do it either.
³¹
An editorial writer opined, “We do not think the invention is worth a cent or the patent either.”
³²

Robert St. George Dyrenforth (1844–1910), a controversial and flamboyant patent lawyer from Washington, D.C., was certain that rain could be caused by explosions in midair. He read whatever he could about rainmaking, including Le Maout's pamphlets from France and the second edition of Powers's book, published in 1890, and consulted with meteorologist John P. Finley of the Signal Service and many others. During a severe and prolonged western drought, Charles Farwell, now a U.S. senator, succeeded in obtaining appropriations of $9,000 for the support of a new series of field experiments on rainmaking by concussion. He recommended that Secretary of Agriculture Jeremiah Rusk be placed in charge of the project. The newly formed U.S. Weather Bureau, also under Rusk's supervision, was quite skeptical of rainmaking by concussion, and the chief of
the Division of Forestry, Bernhard E. Fernow, thought that the entire enterprise was under-conceptualized, with no reasonable expectation that the experiments would be effective. Nevertheless, Rusk chose Dyrenforth as the lead investigator and special agent of the government.

Dyrenforth was born in Chicago and received his education in Germany, at Prussian military academies, at the Polytechnic School in Karlsruhe, and at the University of Heidelberg, where he was awarded a doctorate in mechanical engineering in 1869. He served as a war correspondent during the Austro-Prussian War of 1861 and, during the Civil War, attained the rank of major in the Union Army, but later he claimed he was a “general.” After studying law at Colombian College in Washington, D.C., he worked as an attorney for the Patent Office and in private practice. It was said that Dyrenforth was boastful of his accomplishments, even alleged ones, and was extremely demanding of both his family and his subordinates.
³³

Dyrenforth decided that the best rainmaking policy would be to attack the atmosphere on multiple fronts with balloons, kites, dynamite, mortars, smoke bombs, and even fireworks. His primary idea was to stimulate condensation of moisture or deflection and mixing of opposing moist and cold air currents by concussion, using whatever explosive devices were available to him. In this, he was firmly following trails blazed by Powers and Ruggles. Dyrenforth theorized that as secondary effects, the explosions would generate shock, pressure, and heat, creating a powerful upward current in the form of an eddy or a whirlpool and inward- and upward-rushing streams of air in line with Espy's convective theory. The explosions should also generate electrical charges that would polarize the Earth and sky, generate a magnetic field, and possibly enhance the condensation of moisture—a theory reminiscent of the one articulated by the American chemist Robert Hare in the 1830s. Following a line of reasoning attributed to the Scottish physicist and meteorologist John Aitken. Dyrenforth expected smoke from the gunpowder to provide nuclei for the agglomeration of suspended particles of moisture.

Another idea was that balloons inflated with one part oxygen and two parts hydrogen and detonated aloft with an electric spark would supposedly form a small amount of liquid water in the process, thereby seeding the clouds with sympathetic nuclei for the aggregation of more water. Critics pointed out that producing hydrogen and oxygen gases in the field was slow and required bulky and expensive equipment and supplies. Moreover, since a large exploding balloon could be expected to produce no more than 6 ounces of water, it would probably be more efficient to fly a pint of water into a cloud on a balloon or kite and just release it. Dyrenforth was persistent, however, since he favored a secondary
effect of this technique: the loud bang produced by the exploding balloon. He noted that a small bubble of oxy-hydrogen produces a report like a “horse-pistol,” and recalled an occasion years before, when physicist Joseph Henry had detonated 50 cubic feet of the mixture in a buried vessel, and the explosion tore a hole in the ground 18 feet in diameter. Dyrenforth's experiments with rackarock (an explosive widely used in coal mining) and a 10-foot oxy-hydrogen balloon on his country estate in Mount Pleasant, near the current National Zoological Park in Washington, D.C., were witnessed by Secretary of the Smithsonian Samuel P. Langley, John Wesley Powell of the U.S. Geological Survey, patent-holder Daniel Ruggles, and other luminaries. Although Dyrenforth did not generate rain that day, he did induce a letter of protest to the secretary of agriculture from his neighbor William J. Rhees, chief clerk of the Smithsonian, who claimed the blasts disturbed his fine herd of Jersey cows, shook his farmhouse, and alarmed his family. Beyond the neighborhood upset, this exercise in backyard bombing, with smoke billowing and flaming oxy-hydrogen balloons falling from the sky, was dramatic, it attracted a large crowd of onlookers, and it was fun. It amounted to the government's declaration of war on both drought and boredom.
³⁴

Nelson Morris, a prominent Chicago meatpacker who was said to own the largest herd of Black Angus cattle in the world, offered his “C” Ranch near Midland, Texas, as a site for the field trials. The ranch was located at 32º12'N, 102º20' W, at an elevation of about 3,000 feet, in dry, hilly country just off the right-of-way of the Texas and Pacific Railroad. Morris sweetened the offer with free room and board for Dyrenforth's team and payment of all local expenses. The site is located on Ranch Road 1788, not far from the New Mexico towns of Alamogordo, Socorro, and Roswell, if you get my drift and are looking for a day trip.

The advance party left Washington, D.C., on July 3, 1891, by train, carrying suitcases, mortars, and 2 tons of cast-iron borings furnished by the navy for making hydrogen. The full account is in Dyrenforth's final report, but as recorded more humorously by the
Farm Implement News
of Chicago, the party consisted of half a dozen special scientists, “all of whom know a great deal, some of them having become bald-headed in their earnest search for theoretical knowledge.”
³⁵
Myers and Castellar were the balloonists; Rosell, the chemist; Curtis, the meteorologist; and Draper, the electrician. In St. Louis, they added 8 tons of sulfuric acid in drums, 5 additional tons of cast iron, 1 ton of chloride of potash, and 0.5 ton of manganese oxide, along with casks, balloons, and other supplies. Once they got to Texas, the railroad provided them free passage to Midland, where they arrived on August 5. Waiting for them on the siding was a block of pure tin rolled into thin sheets for making electrical kites and six kegs of blasting powder donated by a local coal mine.

The arrival of “Generals” Dyrenforth, Powers, and Ruggles coincided with a summer dry spell but also, conveniently, with the traditional (and commonly known) onset of the rainy or monsoon season, when winds from the Gulf of Mexico and the Gulf of California typically bring showers and thunderstorms to the high plains. Dyrenforth, broad-shouldered and brash, wearing cavalry boots and a campaign pith helmet, gave a public address to dramatize the situation and heighten the sense of accomplishment if his rainmaking experiments happened to succeed. He emphasized the barrenness and extreme aridity of the region, the heat, harsh Sun, cloudless sky, dry south wind, alkaline soil, and feeling that his skin was turning into parchment. Although even as he spoke the winds were beginning to loft moisture across Texas from the south, he pointed out the current local dry conditions. He was sure that, by his technique, Midland's wells and lakes would fill up, its fine soils would produce a bountiful crop, and there would be little left to desire—if the region could only be supplied with water.

At the “C” Ranch, a front line of attack was established with sixty makeshift mortars constructed from 6-inch well pipe. His crew tamped charges of dynamite into prairie dog holes, placed them on flat stones, and draped mesquite bushes with rackarock. The electrical kites and the oxy-hydrogen balloons formed the second and third lines of battle. The contract meteorologist, George E. Curtis, deployed barometers, thermometers, sling psychrometers, and an anemometer, but curiously no rain gauges and no electrical measuring apparatus.
³⁶
The first rain fell on August 13, before any experiments had been made, but the
Chicago Herald
reported this event as “heavy rain at the ranch in response to the party's efforts.” This on a day when the U.S. Weather Bureau was predicting rain and showers in the state, mainly east of Midland. Still, Dyrenforth assumed that he had had some effect in causing the nimbus clouds to drop their loads on Midland and claimed that he had caused a “very heavy rain” of about an inch that day.

The reporter on assignment from the
Farm Implement News
had a different perspective. The headline read: “News from the Rainmakers. They fail on account of the dry weather and because their apparatus won't work. The elements play them false.” Of their efforts he wrote,

Beginning on the evening of August 17, a massive barrage of aerial and ground explosions echoed throughout the night. At dawn, the skies were clear, but twelve hours later rain began to fall in the area. Dyrenforth took immediate credit for this, even though the ranch received only a trace amount of rain. About a week later, on August 25, a day after the weather observer, Curtis, had departed, Dyrenforth declared the weather “settled and dry,” this according to the opinion of the ranch hands. The team set off a barrage of explosions all day, ending at eleven o'clock that night with Dyrenforth commenting that the “atmosphere at that time [was] very clear, and as dry as I have ever observed it.” But seemingly, the concussions had done their job, for “at about 3 o'clock on the following morning, August 26, I was awakened by violent thunder, which was accompanied by vivid lightning, and a heavy rainstorm was seen to the north—that is, in the direction toward which the surface wind had steadily blown during the firing, and hence the direction in which the shocks of the explosions were chiefly carried.”
³⁸

Professor Alexander McFarlane of the University of Texas had a different perspective: “The trial of Friday, August 25, was a crucial test, and resulted not only in demonstrating what every person who has any sound knowledge of physics knows, that it is impossible to produce rain by making a great noise, but also that even the explosion of a twelve-foot balloon inside a black rain cloud does not bring down a shower.”
³⁹
Dyrenforth left the next day for Washington with an inconclusive set of results, but clearly thinking and claiming that he had made a difference. He instructed his expedition, under the direction of John T. Ellis, to carry on in El Paso at the invitation of the mayor, as long as expenses were paid.

In need of munitions, Ellis contracted with the Consolidated Fireworks Company of North America in New York City for six dozen bombshell salutes, each weighing 21 pounds. He also bought 2,000 cubic feet of oxygen and 1,000 pounds of dynamite. The city of El Paso paid the $477 bill for equipment and shipping. The team conducted experiments in September about 1.5 miles north of the city center, on a ridge about 5,700 feet above sea level.

On September 18, a team of twenty-three artillerists fired at the sky all day long, in what one observer called “a beautiful imitation of a battle.” Many prominent witnesses were in attendance for the event, including the mayor, the local weather bureau observer, curious citizens, and dignitaries from Mexico. They assembled on the ridgeline with their buggies and parasols to watch Ellis inflate his hydrogen balloon and ascend into the heavens (figure 2.1). Most brought their lunches and were treated to an all-day fireworks display. Witnesses reported seeing clouds and lightning flashes downwind at sunset (not at all unusual in this
climate). Ellis reported hopefully, “Soon after midnight rain had begun to fall
within a few miles of El Paso
, to the south and southeast.”
⁴⁰
Remember, however, that they were experimenting
north
of the city and the prevailing winds were from the south. In other words, whether the Ellis team was responsible or not, they were willing to take credit for any rain that fell anywhere in the region. The final bill presented to the city for one thundershower during the “rainy” season was $1,300.