The Top 10: Ideas For Controlling the Weather

From ancient times to modern climate science, people have always wanted to make it rain, or to make it stop

When the wind blows: the US president wanted to go nuclear on a hurricane (Reuters)

This one was inspired by Donald Trump suggesting we should explode a nuclear warhead in a hurricane. Thanks to Robert Boston for the idea.

1. In the Odyssey, Aeolus, king of the winds, put all the winds in a leather bag except for the west wind so Odysseus could sail home to Ithaca. In the Aeneid, Juno offers Aeolus a wife as a bribe to calm the winds for Aeneas. “I doubt Trump is a student of either Homer or Virgil though,” said Graham Kirby.

2. David Cameron nominated his former adviser Steve Hilton. In his memoir For the Record, published last week, he said Hilton’s ideas “continued to be one part brilliant to several parts bonkers, the latter of which included cutting the civil service by 70 per cent, scrapping maternity pay, closing all Jobcentres and – no joke – introducing cloud-bursting technology that would, he claimed, stop it raining over Britain. True blue-sky thinking.”

3. Pat Robinson, US televangelist, claimed to have stopped Hurricane Esther and turned it round in 1961, by the power of prayer. Thanks to Steven Fogel.

4. The Great Green Wall of Africa: a ribbon of forest south of the Sahara to counter desertification. First proposed in 1954; revived in 2002 and planting began about 10 years ago. Nominated by Steven Richards.

5. The Beijing Weather Modification Office fired rockets containing silver iodide to trigger rain to ensure the Olympic opening ceremony in 2008 was dry. Thanks to John Peters.

6. Denis Howell was appointed minister for drought in 1976. The appointment alone seemed to do the trick – within days he was appointed minister for floods. Nominated by Robert Boston and John Peters.

7. Cloudbuster, a device built by Wilhelm Reich, Austrian psychoanalyst, to draw “orgone energy” from the atmosphere, supposedly creating clouds and rain. Inspired “Cloudbusting”, the 1985 song by Kate Bush, which describes Reich’s arrest as told by his son, Peter, in A Book of Dreams, 1973. Thanks to No Ordinary Cat.

8. FIDO, Fog Investigation and Dispersal Operation, was a successful project to disperse fog around airfields during the Second World War. It used pipelines to burn petrol at intervals along the sides of runways. From John Oxley.

9. In the Judge Dredd comic series Mega-City One had “weather control”, a satellite above the city that kept the weather sunny and warm (or ensured a white Christmas). “It did create problems for the writers if they wanted atmospheric rain – they’d have to throw in lines about it malfunctioning,” said Will Cooling.

10. Znamya project: Russian experiments in the 1990s using huge mirrors on satellites to reflect solar power to Earth. “The reason I remember it,” said Alan Robertson, “is that it was the subject of an item on Radio 2 inviting listeners to contribute a punning headline, with the winning entry being, ‘The Sun: see it first in the mirror.’”

In the “there’s always one” category, Star Man nominated the umbrella.

Next week: Marxist-Leninists who went on to other things, starting with Claire Fox, once of the Revolutionary Communist Party, now a Brexit Party MEP.

Coming soon: Unlikely things named after battles, such as Chicken Marengo and Maida Vale.

Your suggestions please, and ideas for future Top 10s, to me on Twitter, or by email to top10@independent.co.uk