Weatherwatch: The big guns fire and the rains fall

http://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/mar/22/weatherwatch-first-world-war-guns-rain

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The weather 100 years ago during the first world war was atrocious. Torrential rains fell for months on end in one of the wettest periods on record, turning the ground on the Western Front into a quagmire. Heavy rains began falling in October 1914 as British troops tried to head off a German advance at Ypres. The region was notorious for flooding and after relentless rains lashed down for weeks on end the First Battle of Ypres came to a halt in November.

Conditions deteriorated even further during one of the wettest winters known – “The war that would be over by Christmas” turned into a flood, trenches collapsed and trenchfoot became widespread. And the rains carried on well into 1915. One excerpt from a description of the defence of Givenchy read “The Indian corps attacked at 3.10am on the cold, windy, rainy early morning of 19 December 1914”.

In fact, there was a widespread belief that the rains were triggered by the artillery guns on the battlefields, disturbing the atmosphere and unleashing huge rainfalls. This wasn’t a new idea – in 1910, the House of Commons had asked the Admiralty if the fleet could avoid carrying out heavy gun practice during harvest time, to avoid farmers being rained on. The idea gained added credibility during the war, when the big guns could be heard in England as the rains fell down. In 1917, as the artillery bombardments reached a new intensity, rainfall returned to normal levels. But still the public believed gunfire led to rains.

The belief in gunfire changing the weather still persists – in China, for example, anti-aircraft guns are fired into clouds to prevent hailstones forming.