Mexican VW [image credit: retro-motoring.com]
This sounds totally bizarre – a local version of geo-engineering?
Mexican farming communities accused German auto giant Volkswagen on Tuesday of “arbitrarily” provoking a drought in the central state of Puebla to protect its newly manufactured cars from hail, reports Phys.org.
Volkswagen, which has a major plant in Puebla, has been using “hail cannons”—sonic devices that purport to disrupt the formation of hail in the atmosphere—to disperse storm clouds menacing the thousands of new cars parked on its lots.
But farmers in Cuautlancingo, the rural municipality where the plant is located, say the controversial technique is causing a drought that has made them lose 2,000 hectares (nearly 5,000 acres) of crops.
Scientists are skeptical over whether hail cannons actually work.
But local farmers say the cannons work so well they have dispersed not only hail storms but all precipitation since May—what was supposed to be the start of the rainy season.
The farmers are reportedly seeking more than 70 million pesos (nearly $4 million) in compensation from the automaker.
Volkswagen tried to defuse the conflict this week by announcing it was taking the cannons off automatic mode and would only fire them when potential hail storms approached.
It also pledged to invest in protective mesh to serve as its first line of defense against hail.
But that only added to the fury of local farmers and officials who have been protesting against the auto maker.
“It is unacceptable that they continue using this device, even in manual mode. They are not respecting their neighbors’ request to definitively stop using hail cannons. They are acting arbitrarily,” said Rafael Ramirez, the top local environmental official.
“The company can take other measures to protect its cars, but people here can’t live off anything but their land,” he told AFP.
“Volkswagen claims to be an environmentally friendly company, but they’re not showing it.”
Gerardo Perez, a leader of the farmers who have been protesting against Volkswagen, said the hail cannons are “affecting the Earth’s cycles.”
When they emit their sonic booms, “the sky literally clears and it simply doesn’t rain,” he said.
Continued here.
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
Maybe they need some ‘Solid Rain’ [2016 video – Reuters report]
A couple of points here.
1) is there any proof that these devices actually do what it says on the label – destroy hale?
2) are the farmers seeing Volkswagen as a sugar daddy that will top up their income in drought times?
From what I have been able to find out firing one of these cannons at the clouds to disrupt hail formation is about as effective as spraying pixie dust over the cars to protect them. A year or so ago some company tried to sell these things to the vineyards in my local area. The local growers are not daft and essentially said ‘prove it’ because some of the local fruit growers use a much scaled down version to scare the birds from the fruit. A demonstration was arranged with the end result of it not working as described. The conclusion I came away with is these things rely on belief, belief that the hail storm would have been worse if the cannon was not used. As for it causing a drought – very unlikely.
DW.com reports:
VW’s Puebla plant…is the German carmaker’s largest outside Germany, employing 15,000 people who produce more than 450,000 vehicles a year.
. . .
VW has officially been granted permission to use hail cannons, although the technology still lacks scientific evidence supporting its efficacy. Ironically, Mexican farmers themselves often deploy the machines as a storm approaches as a means to protect their crops from being damaged. [bold added]
https://www.dw.com/en/vw-hail-cannons-anger-drought-hit-mexican-farmers/a-45171508
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Climate:
Puebla features a Subtropical highland climate. The climate is moderated by its high altitude of 2,200 m (7,217.85 ft). As a result, it rarely gets truly hot in Puebla, with an average of only three days seeing temperatures rise above 29 °C (84 °F). Night temperatures are cool at all times of the year. Puebla experiences a dry season from November through April and a rainy season from May–October. The valley has a temperate climate while the higher elevations have cold climates. Most rain falls in the summer and early fall.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puebla_City#Climate
VW ought to pay them off and quit trying to control the weather, build covered parking for new cars or place them directly into rail cars (which are covered).
Dispersing clouds capable to rain or hail in a dry landscape is just plain dumb.
Kip Hansen says:
August 22, 2018 at 3:39 pm
YO! Kip, ya forgot the (/sarc) tag there buddy
Re: build covered parking for new cars or place them directly into rail cars
Kip – they produce 450,000 cars a year there.
in a dry landscape
May – September is the rainy season, or is supposed to be.
Kip, These things are NOT supposed to disperse the clouds (that would require several orders of magnitude than they can supply) so we can scrap that idea.
On reading about the idea it appears that some good marketing people read about rural villages using cannon fire to warn the workers out in the fields of approaching large storms (they used cannons because the church bells were not easy to hear out of the village) and jumped to the conclusion that the cannon fire somehow deflected the storm.
There is no scientific evidence that these modern hail cannon actually do anything except make everyone jump when they go off although there is the possibility of deafness for people too close at the time of discharge.
That should be (that would require energy of several orders of magnitude than they can supply)
Sorry .
A historical parallel: In 1754 Mr. Divis erected a “weather machine” (a complicated lightning rod) in Primetice, Moravia. The year 1759 was unusually dry, villagers blamed the machine, and destroyed it in 1760, instead of suing the inventor.
Charles Knight, a cloud physicist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, said in a July 10, 2008, newspaper article that “I don’t find anyone in the scientific community who would validate hail cannons, but there are believers in all sorts of things. It would be very hard to prove they don’t work, weather being as unpredictable as it is.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hail_cannon
Early Slovakian model…
Scaling up…
China building artificial rain network to increase rainfall
08/23/2018 / By Edsel Cook
China is preparing the biggest weather manipulation system the world has ever seen.
. . .
When completed, the network will cover an area of 620,000 square miles (1.6 million sq. km) – more than twice the size of Texas.
http://climatesciencenews.com/2018-08-23-china-building-artificial-rain-network-to-increase-rainfall.html
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Winners and losers?
More legal trouble for VW…
EU targets BMW, Daimler, VW in pollution cartel probe
[EU] Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said BMW, Daimler and VW are suspected of agreeing “not to compete against each other on the development and roll-out” of anti-pollution systems for petrol and diesel passenger cars.
“If proven, this collusion may have denied consumers the opportunity to buy less polluting cars, despite the technology being available to the manufacturers,” she added.
. . .
Daimler and VW are widely reported to be putting themselves forward as whistle-blowers in the case, in order to win leniency with the EU authorities.
https://www.afp.com/en/news/23/eu-targets-bmw-daimler-vw-pollution-cartel-probe-doc-1974ay3