Posts Tagged ‘Rainfall’

The city council signed a contract yesterday with Hatfield, the Moisture Accelerator. He has promised to fill Morena reservoir to overflowing by December 20, 1916, for $10,000. All the councilmen are in favor of the contract except Fay, who says it’s rank foolishness.  —San Diego Union.

By the end of 1915, San Diego was in its fifth year of drought.  The city reservoirs of Morena and Otay were nearly empty.  With water supplies threatened, the nervous City Councilmen gave verbal acceptance to the offer of a “Rainmaker,” Charles M. Hatfield, who boldly pledged to “fill the Morena reservoir to overflowing . . .”

Read the story of The Rainmaker

Mission Valley, flooded in January 1916.

“A big rain is coming,” predicted Henry Cooper, Escondido’s celebrated, amateur weather prognosticator. The Escondido Weather Prophet, as he was known, spoke in early February 1927, predicting a major storm for later in the month. “We shall have copious rains all along the coast,” Cooper declared, “with assured runoff from a heavy mantle of snow in the mountains.”

Read the story of one of San Diego’s biggest rain years: the Flood of 1927.

Mission Valley under water, Feb. 1927.