Shooting at clouds or marrying frogs – everything people try to make it shudder
Yes, the weather. Above all, the rain. Sometimes there is too much of it, sometimes it doesn’t rain for too long. While one of us is just complaining, the people of the southwestern United States are getting ready to do something. In midsummer, when it’s particularly dry, Native American tribes perform a rain dance. At least those of them who still refer to their traditions, such as the Zuni, who celebrate the ritual every year on August 19th.
For a decent rain dance, however, you need special clothing, otherwise it won’t work. Gemstones – especially turquoise – are one of them, certain patterns soothe the gods, and goat hair and an eagle’s feather should definitely be found in the headgear of women; horse hair is needed for men. Then it can go. However, the steps of the rain dance are quite complicated.
In Thailand a cat is carried through the village and sprayed
Unlike the circle dances known from relevant television documentaries, men and women stand in separate rows and dance zigzag lines; exactly how this works has been passed down orally for centuries. Bells attached to the legs determine the rhythm and are intended to imitate the rippling of water. It is very similar in northeast Thailand, only that here you carry a cat through the village. In front of every house it is splashed with water by the landlord. Their screams should bring rain within a few days.
Every now and then it works. Animals are also used in southern India: To appease the rain god, villagers marry in lavish ceremonies … frogs. According to Hindu tradition, the animals are decorated with flowers and rubbed with turmeric. While the clergy are blessing the frog couple, a marching band plays songs from Bollywood films. At least everyone gets something out of it, and the ceremony sounds much nicer than the ritual that was practiced a long time ago in ancient China, where shamans had to dance in a ring of fire until the sweat splashed through the area.
Today people work differently in China. As early as 2008, more than 1,000 rockets were fired into the air in China to bring down clouds that would otherwise have drenched state guests at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Beijing. The technology required for this – silver iodide particles are brought into the clouds with the help of airplanes, causing raindrops to form – is also used selectively in Germany, for example to protect wine-growing areas from the threat of hail.
China wants to control the rain on the Tibetan plateau from 2025
What China is currently planning, however, goes beyond all known dimensions. In an area of 5.5 million square kilometers (about 15 times the size of the Federal Republic), which is located on the Tibetan plateau, the aim is to control rain from 2025. The aim of the program is to contain natural disasters associated with rainfall, to provide agriculture with an optimal supply of water and to revitalize ecosystems in the arid north of China.
The program, which bears the megalomaniac title “Taming the Sky”, does not only provide for the tapping of clouds. With a sophisticated technology, researchers want to direct entire cloud flows in the desired direction – for example to dried out fields. We are talking about “cloud highways”. Sounds practical, but it has pitfalls. If the clouds leave their natural path, the neighboring country India could be deprived of the needed water, so the fear.
The possible consequences of such manipulations are shown in a case in Mexico, where the car manufacturer Volkswagen installed what is known as a hail defense system around one of its factories to protect its vehicles from damage. Think of it as a kind of cannon that automatically shoots shock waves into the atmosphere in certain weather conditions to prevent hail from forming. The local farmers, however, reported that the hail defense triggered a drought, and the crop failures ran into the millions. Volkswagen then announced that it would stretch nets over the parked cars in the future to protect them from hailstones. China should maybe try one more time with the sweating shamans. It would be worth a try.
