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Throughout history, humanity has sought to harness the powers of nature. Agriculture serves as a prime example, where we learned to cultivate crops, giving us control over food production instead of relying on hunting and scavenging.
Yet, there is one natural force that has remained beyond our control—the weather—which can have a drastic impact on agriculture. While we've developed structures to shield ourselves from the elements (like buildings), and even created indoor environments (such as ski slopes), we’re still vulnerable to Earth's unpredictable climate systems, including droughts and monsoons.
Weather modification has had some notable applications worldwide. The US military used artificial rain during the Vietnam War, while China controlled the weather for the 2008 Olympics. Though these were significant projects, we'll delve into the more bizarre endeavors—from speculative ideas to real-world practices.
10. Shoot and Make Noise to Stop Hail
A hailstorm can quickly devastate entire crops. Even in ancient times, people realized that praying wouldn't stop hail. The ancient Roman legal code, the Twelve Tables, even forbade superstitions in attempts to fend off hail. However, it didn't specifically mention using weapons and sound to combat it.
This led to a tradition, despite laws banning such practices. In 789, Charlemagne (also known as Charles the Great), king of the Franks, had to ban people from ringing church bells and setting up prayer tables whenever there was hail.
Later, people began shooting arrows at the clouds. As gunpowder spread, people turned to cannons, muskets, and rifles. In 1750, the Austrian Empire made this practice illegal, but by 1886, they seemed to relent and were conducting their own anti-hail experiments by firing large mortars at the clouds.
9. Plant a Forest, Burn It, Repeat
In 1836, James Pollard Espy, the first official meteorologist for the US government, proposed a solution to the question of how to generate storms: set things on fire. His theory was that storms are caused by columns of rising hot air, which produces rainfall.
He envisioned a forest running from north to south across the western US. Sections could be set on fire to induce rainfall when farmers requested it. Despite his polite proposal for a 966-kilometer (600 mi) test stretch, the government rejected the idea. Some scientists pointed out that forest fires occur regularly without triggering rainfall, which didn't strengthen his case.
However, some feared that Espy's method might work, granting the federal government the ability to control the weather. Senator John Crittenden of Kentucky remarked, “And if he possesses the power of causing rain, he may also possess the power of withholding it.”
In essence, they believed Espy could become a power-hungry weather tyrant, with the government's approval.
8. Blowing Up Government Money
In 1891, the US Congress allocated funds to one man for conducting weather experiments. Robert St. George Dyrenforth traveled to Midland, Texas, with $9,000 worth of equipment, including massive kites, 3- to 6-meter-tall (10–20 ft) balloons, mortars, six kegs of blasting powder, and 230 kilograms (500 lb) of manganese oxide.
His plan: explode the sky using kites and balloons filled with explosives.
Initially, things went well since no major newspapers sent reporters to cover Dyrenforth’s work. He claimed responsibility for rain that occurred far from his location and even for showers predicted by the Weather Bureau. The Sun called it “a great success,” despite never having been there.
In 1892, Congress gave Dyrenforth another $10,000, but his fortune changed. In October 1892, his nighttime explosions in the Washington, DC, area around Fort Myer achieved nothing but “profanity in 17 different languages” in the diverse community.
By December, Dyrenforth moved to Texas, where the media began to turn against him. A San Antonio newspaper reported that his plans had “gone up like a rocket and come down like a stick.” After that, Congress refused to release the remaining $5,000 from his budget, putting an end to his experiments.
7. The Rainmaking Gun
The Steiger Vortex gun, created by Albert Steiger, was a 5-meter-tall (16.4 ft) metal device shaped like an ice cream cone. Its purpose was to produce vibrations that would destroy hail and create rain. It was deployed in Austria to protect wine-producing regions.
Clement Wragge, an Australian government meteorologist, was so impressed by the technology that he brought it back to his homeland. In September 1902, six of these guns were set up in Charleville. Despite firing at regular two-minute intervals, no rain was generated. In fact, the only thing dampened was Wragge’s career in meteorology.
6. Melting The Ice Caps
In today’s climate change era, we are often warned about the dangers of melting ice caps and the poles. However, in the past, people wanted to wage a full-on war against them.
In 1877, N.S. Shaler wrote in The Atlantic Monthly, expressing his disdain for the poles, calling the cold weather they brought “ruthless as Huns, slaying and scalping all the creatures of summer like barbarians as they are.”
He suggested that we reroute the Pacific Ocean's warm Kuroshio Current through the Bering Strait. This, he believed, would raise Arctic temperatures by 16.67 degrees Celsius (30 °F) and rid North America of winter forever.
5. Move The Earth
In late 1912, the North and South Poles were still viewed as the enemy. As reported by The New York Times, we needed to eliminate “the iceberg menace.” The sinking of the Titanic in April of that year might explain the widespread hostility. Carroll Livingston Riker, an engineer from New York, proposed a $190 million plan.
He proposed constructing a 320-kilometer (200 mi) jetty extending eastward from Newfoundland to divert the Gulf Stream. This jetty would block the cold Labrador Current, pushing it eastward to intersect with the northward-flowing Gulf Stream in deeper waters. The jetty would have been topped with 9 meters (30 ft) of rocks.
Because warm water is lighter than cold water, this would allow the warm water to travel much farther—about 645 kilometers (400 mi) north—ultimately warming those currents too. According to Riker's hypothesis, this would melt Greenland's thick ice cap and potentially alter the Earth's axis.
However, these ambitious plans never materialized, and the poles remained untouched for the time being.
4. The Nuclear Solution
In 1945, Julian Huxley, a cofounder of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), addressed a conference at Madison Square Garden where he proposed using nuclear bombs as “atomic dynamite [for] landscaping the Earth” (effectively melting the polar ice cap).
This was highly inappropriate for two major reasons. First, the US had just dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, causing the deaths of over 100,000 people. Second, the conference was centered around arms control, leading us to question whether the participants truly wanted to discuss the use of more nuclear bombs.
3. Burning Up The Sky
At times, even the most outlandish ideas can be effective. During World War II, the Royal Air Force (RAF) developed the Fog Investigation and Dispersal Operation (FIDO) system, which enabled planes to take off in thick fog.
FIDO worked by laying pipes with burners around airfields, fed by petrol tanks. These burners produced flames that raised the temperature enough to clear the fog, allowing the RAF to launch aircraft and strike German forces grounded by the mist.
The system was in operation from 1943 to 1945 but was eventually discontinued due to its high costs. The RAF consumed over 380,000 liters (100,000 gallons) of petrol per hour to keep FIDO running. The last FIDO unit was removed from RAF Manston in 1959, leaving the project dormant thereafter.
2. Grand Theft Cloud
In 2018, Iran accused Israel of stealing water from clouds before they could reach Iranian territory. At the time, Brigadier General Gholam Reza Jalali, head of Iran’s Civil Defense Organization, stated, “We are faced with the cases of cloud theft and snow theft.” He also referred to a study that found snowfall had occurred in all highlands above 2,200 meters (7,200 feet) from the Mediterranean to Afghanistan—except in Iran.
Thankfully, Ahad Vazife from the Iran Meteorological Organization intervened to prevent the situation from escalating into a full-blown diplomatic crisis, particularly given the tense relations between the two nations over Syria. Vazife cleverly pointed out that if it were possible for countries to hijack clouds, the US wouldn’t be facing a water shortage. Instead, the US would simply have stolen someone else’s rainfall.
1. Build A Huge Dam
Despite Russia's vast size, much of it remains ice-covered or uninhabitable due to the harsh cold. During the Cold War, the Soviets proposed constructing a massive dam stretching from their eastern coast to Alaska. This ambitious project was aimed at redirecting the Gulf Stream northward to warm the Arctic. The plan would have unlocked more land for the Soviets to utilize.
Remarkably, the Americans were almost on board with this idea, even though it was the height of the Cold War. The Soviets argued that a warmer climate would benefit everyone. The concept was discussed in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which raised the topic during the 1960 presidential debates.
In response, then-Senator John F. Kennedy remarked that the proposal was 'certainly worth exploring' in the spirit of fostering greater cooperation.
