/biz/ - Business & Finance

>https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/local-history/story/2022-01-18/from-the-archives-rainmaker-named-hatfield-in-san-diego-50-years-ago
From the article
>The cloud-seeders says Hatfield, “all use the same thing (silver iodine). It works to a certain extent, but it’s so minute it’s hardly worth bothering with.”

>Hatfield doesn’t do any rainmaking these days — “Why do that now? It’s already proven itself” — but he still gets occasional requests for rain.

>More than once the Hatfields’ success was more than they bargained for. Their first big contract, in 1905, guaranteed 18 inches of rain in Los Angeles and recalls Hatfield, “we had 26 inches and 49-1000ths in three and a half months.” The fee, $1,000.

>Still Hatfield thinks their greatest success was an experiment in the Mojave Desert in August, 1927. “The engineers claimed 240 inches of rain came in one hour — imagine that. It brought down boulders as big as an ordinary house.”

>He adds, “We’d get arrested today. They’d run us in. There’s a state law that says you have to tell them what you use. That’s the reason we quit. But I might fool you one of these days.”