Charles Hatfield: Rainmaker or Con Man? The 1916 San Diego Flood
When the city of San Diego hired Charles Hatfield to fix the devastating drought of 1915, they got more than they bargained for.
Quick Reference
- Who: Charles Hatfield (1875 to 1958), self-styled “rainmaker.”
- Method: Secret recipe of 23 chemicals evaporated from tall wooden towers. Pre-cloud-seeding pseudoscience.
- Famous job: Hired by San Diego in January 1916 for $10,000 to break a long drought.
- Result: Heavy rains, then catastrophic floods. Lower Otay Dam broke. About 20 dead. Hatfield never paid.
- Verdict: Two courts ruled the floods were an act of God. Most historians say Hatfield was a clever weather forecaster, not a rainmaker.
What would you do if you were facing the worst drought your county had ever seen? As you watched crops wither, food grow scarce, and even drinking water vanish, you might be tempted to go to extreme lengths to bring in the rain. That is what San Diego did in 1915. In desperation, the city hired a man named Charles Hatfield who claimed he could make it rain. They got more than they bargained for.
Who Was Charles Hatfield?
Charles Mallory Hatfield was a sewing-machine salesman from Kansas who turned to weather work at the turn of the 20th century. He claimed a secret recipe of 23 chemicals that, when evaporated from tall wooden towers, would attract moisture and bring on rain. It was an early example of the pseudoscience that later became known as cloud seeding, which modern science has tested but never reliably proven.
By 1904, Hatfield had a following. Western ranchers paid him to call rain with his concoction. Wherever he went, rain often followed within days. He soon was billed in newspapers as “the Rainmaker.” In 1906, the Yukon Territory paid him a $10,000 contract to bring rain to the Klondike goldfields. He took the money and ran. The Klondike stayed dry.
The 1915 San Diego Drought
By late 1915, San Diego was in deep drought. The Morena Reservoir was a third full. The City Council had heard the stories about Hatfield. They invited him to fill the reservoir. Hatfield was so confident he could do it that he proposed an unusual deal. He would charge nothing for the work itself. He would only collect $1,000 for every inch of rain he produced, up to 50 inches.
For the City Council, it looked like a free roll of the dice. If Hatfield produced no rain, the city paid nothing. If he produced as much as he claimed he could, $50,000 was nothing compared to the cost of the ongoing drought. The deal was sealed with a handshake. Hatfield never put ink to paper. That detail would matter later.
On January 1, 1916, Hatfield and his brother Joel built a 20-foot wooden tower at the Morena Reservoir and started the chemical evaporation. Five days later, the rains began.
From Drought to Flood
And the rains did not stop. By January 10, 1916, severe rains had drenched the San Diego area. More rain fell between January 14 and 18, swelling rivers past their banks and washing away bridges and railroad track. By January 27, dams overflowed. The Lower Otay Dam broke under the pressure. The flood that followed swept houses, livestock, and people downstream. Roughly 20 people died.
The Aftermath
Despite the destruction, Hatfield considered the deluge a success and showed up to collect his fee. The City Council was furious. Flood damages had reached around $3.5 million in 1916 dollars (about $100 million today). The council refused to pay. Without a signed contract, Hatfield had no legal standing. He fought to collect through the courts until 1938. Two California courts ruled the rains were an act of God. Hatfield never collected a penny. Neither did the City of San Diego from any insurance claim.
Rainmaker or Con Man?
Was Hatfield on to something real? The scientific consensus is no. There is no plausible mechanism by which a tower of evaporating chemicals could cause widespread precipitation. Even during his time, meteorologists noticed that Hatfield tended to show up where rain was already in the upper-air forecast. He claimed to have brought rain over 500 times across his career. Modern climatologists who have reviewed his records suggest he was an excellent informal forecaster who read pressure trends, wind patterns, and El Nino signals decades before they were named. The 1916 San Diego event lined up with a major El Nino winter.
Hatfield never revealed his 23-chemical recipe. He died in 1958 in Glendale, California. The recipe went with him. Hatfield’s story has since inspired the 1956 Burt Lancaster film The Rainmaker, a 2002 documentary, and countless newspaper retrospectives whenever a California drought breaks. The Almanac files him under “respected weather folklore,” with the caveat that the science is thin and the chemicals had nothing to do with it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Charles Hatfield?
A self-styled rainmaker who operated across the American West and Canada from roughly 1900 to the 1930s. He claimed a secret recipe of 23 chemicals that, evaporated from tall wooden towers, could attract rain. His most famous engagement was San Diego in 1916.
What happened in San Diego in 1916?
The city hired Hatfield for $1,000 per inch of rain, up to 50 inches, to break a drought. Heavy rains began five days after he started, peaked into catastrophic flooding by late January, broke the Lower Otay Dam, and killed about 20 people. The City refused to pay. Courts ruled the rain was an act of God.
Did Hatfield’s chemicals actually make it rain?
Almost certainly not. There is no scientific mechanism by which evaporating chemicals could cause regional rainfall. Modern climatologists believe Hatfield was reading upper-air pressure trends and seasonal signals like El Nino well before such tools were formalized. The 1916 San Diego storm aligned with a major El Nino winter.
What was Hatfield’s secret formula?
Unknown. Hatfield refused to disclose his 23-chemical recipe his entire life and took it to the grave when he died in 1958. Various contemporary accounts hint at metallic compounds and ammonia, but no one has ever reproduced or verified it.
Is cloud seeding the same as Hatfield’s method?
Conceptually similar in that both attempt to influence precipitation, but the modern science is very different. Cloud seeding uses silver iodide or salt particles dispersed into existing clouds to encourage condensation. It works marginally and only under specific atmospheric conditions. Hatfield’s tower-evaporation method is not considered scientific.
What movie was inspired by Hatfield?
The 1956 Burt Lancaster film The Rainmaker, written by N. Richard Nash, is the most famous adaptation. The character of Starbuck draws directly on Hatfield’s persona, though the plot is fictional.
Amber Kanuckel
Amber Kanuckel is a freelance writer from rural Ohio who loves all things outdoors. She specializes in home, garden, environmental, and green living topics.
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- Amber Kanuckel
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Rainmaker or con man? Does it really matter? The U.S. told the world they could make it rain 100 years ago. The controllers more than likely control the weather 100%. They could end the fires in L.A. with rain as easy as they create hurricanes! NAMASTE!
Hi Amber
This is not pseudoscience.
There are weather manipulation patents dating back to 1891. The US Military had Operation Popeye causing flooding during the Vietnam War. The US Military wants to Own The Westher by 2025. HAARP is wicked as is cloud seeding. The recent 2024 Dubai flood is the result of UAE cloud seeding operations but they will deny that. They are screaming about anthropogenic climate change when in fact it is weather sabotage by governments around the planet in alignment with UN Agenda 2030 goals, which just happen to include destroying agriculture as we know it and replacing it with pseudofoods.
Amber, a lot of this information is contradictory to almost all historical data. Charles Hatfield was a resident of San Diego, CA. His father had a farm in Vista, which is Southeast of camp Pendleton. So he didn’t just,”happen to show up”, as you put it. Secondly, he was sought out and commissioned to make it rain in lots of arid locations, both prior to and after the 1916 flood . He was even accredited with extimguishishing a fire in Haiti that was uncontrolled, within three days. Lastly, he withdrew his suit for the $10,000. There was no “act of god” judgement- that’s just 100% false. He was told that if he was responsible for the rain then he was responsible for the damages as well, so he wisely eat the loss.
History is better when you get the facts and not fabricate it from thin air. Do some research, or stick to gardening. Even if he was just prediicting weather like a boss, how could he do that in 1916? Half of America didn’t have electricity and there were few telegraph lines, no airplanes….???
We use satellites and massive sets of weather pattern models and still get it wrong. Don’t you think if was that good at predicting weather, he would have done that instead of cloud seeding; which is total science by the way. It’s done with alum- aluminum oxide- and been used as coagulate for decades. If you’ve drank water in the US since 1974(when the Clear Water Act was passed), then guess what, it was coagulated with alum prior the filtration to flocculate the dissolved solids because they are too small to filter and would clog up the osmosis membranes.
Thank you for your information. We love when our readers are able to share their knowledge with us! Thank you for being part of our community!
If you consider the fact that all Schooling Home ec has been taken away which those tools could have actually helped the human race to thrive as well as “ Science or Alchemy” as individuals. Stolen knowledge has been robbed and replaced with a.i. And it came to earth before we knew the time. We never had a chance…….. or did we?, to question. That is why we are here. Not to tell lies or call truths. But to find and KNOW IN OUR HEARTS. And be the CHANGE. I believe in Hatfield & his & this story. Its stolen.
If it’s true that he only appeared when rain was already in the forecast, why would anyone be contracting to pay him to make it rain? If rain was already in the forecast why didn’t people just wait for the rain to come? The claim that he only came when rain was already in the forecast is probably misinformation. And with what we know now about the military and how they have been geo-engineering the weather for over 30 years, i wouldnt doubt that they figured out the chemical formula the Charles was using.
Also Wilhelm Reich, he did it with a more sophisticated, and device that was portable, and could regulate the energy into the atmosphere.
…. and it is also nicely shown in the clip Kate Bush – “Coudbusting”.