100 and 50 years ago | Nature

Access through your institution Buy or subscribe 100 YEARS AGO At the request of the Austrian Ministry of Agriculture, various experiments have been made by Drs Pernter and Trabert with the

view of testing the use of Mr Stiger's apparatus for dispersing hail-clouds by gun-firing. The apparatus consists of a mortar with a long funnel fixed to the orifice ; upon firing a

sufficient charge of powder, rings or whirls are formed in the air and can be followed either by their hissing sound or by the particles of smoke carried up with them. The force and

durability of the whirls vary with the charge, and with the size of the funnel, but it does not appear from the experiments that a greater altitude than about 400 metres was reached, which

is much less than had been previously stated. It does not seem probable, therefore, that unless the hail-clouds are very low that any practical result is likely to be attained. The most that

can be said in favour of the process is that while in some cases the formation of hail may have been prevented by the disturbance of equilibrium, hail frequently falls, in spite of frequent

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permissions ABOUT THIS ARTICLE CITE THIS ARTICLE 100 and 50 years ago. _Nature_ 408, 147 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35041657 Download citation * Issue Date: 09 November 2000 * DOI:

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