Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 201, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 September 1918 — WAR DOES NOT AFFECT RAINFALL LOCALLY OR ELSEWHERE [ARTICLE]

WAR DOES NOT AFFECT RAINFALL LOCALLY OR ELSEWHERE

“There is nothing in it,” says the United States Weather Bureau to repeated inquiries as to whether the war affects rainfall or any other popular fallacy, that concussions, explosions, and the liberation of gases, in the European conflicts is having* an effect on the weather, not only over the battlefields, but elsewhere ' on the globe; but it is only a fallacy, say the. weather specialists of the United States department of agriculture, even though it has existed almost since the beginning of historic times. Before gunpowder was used, the ancients had an idea that battles produced rainfall, which was caused by the clash of swords and the sweat of the fighters. Later, the same theory was transferred to the noise produced by musketry and artillery; later, still, to dust particles and smoke from burning powder, upon which the moisture in the air was supposed ito be condensed and to fall as rain, and now to the gases freed by explosions, and liberated in the new chemical warfare. These theories are not combated merely by other theories, but by actual observations made officially by, several of the belligerent governments, and the net result of these careful observations is to refute the idea of any effect of war on weather.