The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1918-09-06
.RAlNF ALL IS NOT
 CAUSED BY WAR
Real Causes Are Air Cur rents and Big Guns Do Not Cause Any Noticeable Precipitation.

The general press has from time to time printed articles in which the idea of a connection between battle and rainfall has been brought for ward For this reason the weather officials feel that the following facts may be timely and interesting:
 | The real cause of rainfall is the cooling of the air by the vertical ris- ing of heated air currents, and the incoming of cooler currents to take their places. All weather conditions depend ultimately for their origin on the heating and cooling of the at- mosphere All the powder that could be reasonably expended in any battle, even by millions of men engaged, would not be enough to procure any appreciab1e change in temperature throughout amy considerable section of the atmosphere over the battle area.
 Some have thought that the jarring effect of concussions joggle together the moisture particles in the air, just as a sharp tap on a window-pane
 will start a descent of larger. drops : from many small ones made by a mist
 or drizzle. A sharp downpour of rain following immediately after a heavy icraIsh of thunder is supposed to be an example of the same cause and eff } feet. This theory was partly back of the 'rain-making" attempts formerly l tried in Kansas, Texas, and elsewhere
 to break droughts by a "bombard- ment of the skies.''
 , The weather specialists point out that in all such cases, even when rain !. has followed such bombardments, the g moisture was there and was due to e fall anyhow without mans interven- l tion and that in the few cases where
 rain has. fallen 1t has been a mere e coincidence, the rain being due to a natural causes, and the drought was
 broken because it was time that it 9 would have been broken in the nat ', ural course of events. In short, mois- 2 ture would fall when 1t was present ,r if it were not present all the concus- , sions that could be devised by mar IA could not make rain.
 . Actual observations by French, Brit. ish, and American observers have l. failed to establish any relationship 5 between storming the enemy anC ' storms from the skies. Careful stud
  l. not coincide enough to give the basi e for a theory of cause and effect. Tn d great battles in France in the sprint '- of 1917 failed to interrupt the loni . spell of fair weather that accompa h nied them. Furthermore, an exam > ination recently made of the record o of local distribution of rainfall owe
 England during the first p months 0
 h1y hn E,-ffi ficIa ho J. neurological Office resulted in strength n enfng the evidence against the theory ts The director of the French Me n neurological Bureau, M. Ango, practi .d cally says that the wish is father t :, the thought, and that an idea that 1 ,s deep-seated and of long duration die ,s, hard. The survival of the fallacy due to the suggestion oonstantl s given by an instinctive belief. Pos
 sessed of such a belief, one Is incline 'l to note only the favorable cotnci 7' dences, he says, ignoring the man UT circumstances that do not bear ou
 the theory. and thus to become nor and more confirmed in the opinion. a. It has been maintained that recer r. severe droughts in the western pal n of this country have been due to e1 s. cessive rainfalls over European ba it, tlefields. The idea was advance D. that so much rain has fallen to France that there was not enough n- go round, so the folks in other qua is ters of the globe had to do withou m The Weather Bureau says that g a. such theories are in the same ca 1i- egory and all are equally unworthy
 belief.