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Weather-Control Machine - TV Tropes

A machine that seems to be able to control elements in the atmosphere to create or disperse clouds, incude said clouds to rain or generate lightning, or even cause full-fledged hurricanes, sometimes with such destructiveness that it doubles as a Doomsday Device in its own right; sometimes, the device may somehow be able to cause phenomena that have no relation to weather at all, because TV writers seem to not bother to differentiate meteorological natural disasters from non-meteorological ones. The device is more often than not never used for any practical application or to make money directly, which messes with the Willing Suspension of Disbelief. All in all, the whole idea of controlling such a nebulous concept as "weather" is... just odd. It hasn't stopped people from trying though.

Often the cause of Weather Dissonance. If the machine is destroyed, naturally everything will go back to the "default" weather setting of that area regardless of whatever new elements were introduced into the atmosphere to produce these new weather patterns. Expect a villain, if they get their hands on one of these, to hold the world to ransom by threatening to create a Natural Disaster Cascade or just plain use it to commit weather-terrorism on large cities anyway.

Also see Snow Means Cold and Weather of War. See Weather Manipulation for the superpower version and Earthquake Machine for when you'd rather wreak havoc on land than in the atmosphere. Compare Artificial Outdoors Display for when even the weather itself isn't real.

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• In "Dear Alice", the farmer uses a machine to create rain clouds for her crops.

    Anime and Manga 

• Doraemon has several devices in his pocket that can control weather in a sort of way. Doraemon: Nobita's the Legend of the Sun King notably features the Weather Box when Nobita (posing as Prince Tio of Mayana) stops a Human Sacrifice ritual for obtaining rain with said gadget.
• Hanaukyō Maid Team: Ikuyo Suzuki's greatest invention, Tenki-kun from Episode 3, can control the weather. Too bad she can't control him.
• One Piece:
  • Nami, the Straw Hat Pirates' navigator, has the Clima Tact, a small-scale weather control machine built by Usopp. While initially requiring Nami to think outside even Usopp's original specs to use effectively, Usopp has since upgraded it to allow Nami to easily rain lightning down on foes and create deceptive mirages in the heat of battle.
  • The Alabasta arc also introduces to us another weather control device known as Dance Powder. When burned, it causes clouds to rain on the spot... thus stealing the rain that would have fallen somewhere else. Obviously, this stuff is outlawed. Crocodile makes heavy use of it to further his plans, creating a drought in Alabasta and pinning it on its king, so the country will be torn by civil war and be ripe for Crocodile's taking.
  • Enel's flying ship, the Maxim, fits as well; combining the chemicals, water, and technology on board with his Goro Goro no Mi (Rumble-Rumble Fruit) powers enables him to create thunderstorms capable of wiping out entire islands.
• Tenchi Muyo!: A brief offhand line by Sasami in the OVA suggests that Jurai has weather-control technology.

    Asian Animation 

• BoBoiBoy: Probe uses one to disrupt the math test in Season 2 episode 11, with Adu Du telling him which setting to have the machine on. Probe selects the wrong switch and has to sift through different settings, from heat to snow to fruit season (the last one resulting in durians appearing everywhere).
• One episode of Happy Friends has Doctor H. make a weather-controlling machine. The machine is shown to be able to make snow and lightning bolts, among other options that are never seen in action.
• Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Cannons are weather control machines in Flying Island: The Sky Adventure episode 5. Large weather fruits can be shot out of cannons to form different weather patterns in the sky.

    Blogs 

    Comic Books 

• In American Flagg!, Sprite, a forgotten Cold War Soviet satellite programmed to disrupt voting patterns in the 1996 U.S. presidential election, is accidentally activated by a meteorite collision. This causes extraordinary blizzard conditions in 2031 Chicago.
• Atomic Robo has Otto Skorzeny build a "weather cannon." Lampshaded immediately, as Robo claims that it is doomed to failure just because it is so ridiculous (especially since they thought they were building super long distance railgun artillery, which would have been much more useful). He also brings up how inefficient it is, since its one claim to fame was delaying Operation Overlord by two days, despite being in production for months.
• Black Dynamite: The Illuminati's first demonstration of power to Black Dynamite is when one of their agents gets on a radio and says "Rain cease," causing the storm over an entire city to instantly dissipate.
• Blake and Mortimer: In S.O.S. Meteors: Mortimer in Paris, Mortimer uncovers the villains' Evil Plan to use a network of meteorological stations in order to manipulate West Europe's weather. The whole infrastructure is powered by ball lightning. The main objective is to create a fog in which the nitrogen level of air gets lower, turning everyone in the streets "bonkers" by breathing more oxygen, including the cops and army, this way allowing these countries to be invaded.
• Dilbert's Garbage Man has a machine that controls the weather.
• The Flash: The Weather Wizard traditionally uses a wand with weather control technology built in, though there have been some indications that he actually has innate weather powers.
• Judge Dredd:
  • The weather is controlled by humans. These devices went on the fritz after suffering damage during the East Meg (former Soviet block) invasion of Mega City One, making the climate shift rapidly between snow storms and heat waves. The low visibility in particular worked to the advantage of the hit-and-run tactics carried out by Judge Dredd's guerilla forces.
  • Deadworld also used to have machines to regulate the weather. The Dark Judges commandeered them to poison the population and kill off the biosphere.
• In the Legion of Super-Heroes comics, it's the 31st century and all weather is machine-controlled.
• In the first arc of the Mighty Avengers, we learn that Tony Stark (already on the edge of the Moral Event Horizon after the Civil War) has launched weather-altering satellites into orbit. They are hijacked by Ultron.
• Mosely has the AI Gods being able to control the weather to reverse climate change. When lighting struck in the middle of the city, Ruby was confused since she knew that lighting doesn't randomly strike anymore.
• Three weather examples from the DC run of The Powerpuff Girls:
  • In "No Business Like Snow Business" (issue #39), Mojo Jojo uses a ray gun installed in a Zamboni to create a snowstorm in the middle of summer as he's cornered the market on winter goods.
  • In "Weather Vain" (issue #58), Princess Morbucks uses some self-developed powers to create weather disasters and then rescue Townsville from them as a superhero called "The Weather Girl."
  • Mojo creates a storm in Townsville park as a means to harness enough lightning to bring his artificial mate ("The Bride of Mojo Jojo", DC issue #24) to life.
• In PS238, the fact that the school is covered by Weather Satellites is frequently mentioned (and, at one point, weaponized), but even their control cannot stand up to the powers of the Rainmaker. (He's a lot more dangerous than he sounds.) The ghost of a nameless Native Shaman apparently also had weather-control powers when he was alive, and eventually gets to use them when he possesses a student with the ability to channel ghostly powers...
• Rulah, Jungle Goddess: In "The Ice Beast" (Zoot Comics #10), an evil witch doctor and an American engineer join forces to bury the jungle beneath a blizzard. Later, the witch doctor loses control of the machine and the cold snap starts to engulf the rest of the world.
• One of The Smurfs once builds such a device. Things soon go awry.
• In Star Wars: Shattered Empire, the Empire uses a climate-disrupting satellite array to punish Naboo for daring to join the New Republic.
• Wonder Woman:
  • The iconic device of villain Byrna Brilyant, aka "Blue Snowman", creates snowstorms and blizzards. In the Golden Age, it was a large piece of equipment; in the Post-Crisis continuity, she incorporated it into a suit of powered armor; and in Wonder Woman (2016), it's part of her Humongous Mecha, which is named "Blue Snowman".
  • Wonder Woman (1942): Prof Chemico invents a "Climate Changer" which can alter the temperature and weather in large areas. Minister Blizzard decides to steal it in his first appearance.

    Fan Works 

• Subverted in Calvin & Hobbes: The Series: Brainstorm's weather maker actually just creates the illusion that the weather has changed.
• Dungeon Keeper Ami has Dungeon Hearts affecting and corrupting the environments surrounding them, including the weather. Thus, a dungeon heart tends to call on thunderstorms, blizzards and even reddish black clouds that permanently block sunlight. Keeper Mercury decides to use said weathers to power up her windmills to get electricity.
• In Fallout: Equestria, there is a device called the Single Pegasus Project. Whoever gains control of it will be able to control the weather of all Equestria. The project was initially designed to let up the pressure on Weather maintenance for the Pegasi who were getting hammered hard during The Great War, and following The Last Day the Pegasi took control over the facility to seal themselves off from the surface; but at the same time their control over the S.P.P. isn't absolute. This is because Princess Celestia placed her soul inside of the S.P.P.s' Crusader Maneframe Supercomputer to manage the weather, unaware that Rainbow Dash had disconnected the computer from the control system.
• In the Harry Potter fic Make a Wish, Harry is visiting Moscow when a mysterious old man who calls himself General Winter gives him a book of weather control spells. He later uses it to create enough wind to kick up a sandstorm so that he and some of his friends can sneak into a bandit camp in Egypt and rescue another friend whom they'd kidnapped.
• Through the Well of Pirene: The goblins living in the hidden castle in the Everfree use this kind of machine in lieu of traditional magic for their brand of weather control, making rainbows out of crushed gemstones and manticore oil, clouds with water and huge fans and lightning with jars of static and electrically charged thunderstones.

    Films — Animation 

• Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: Flint Lockwood accidentally creates a machine that makes it rain food. This is largely circumstantial, as the machine is a Matter Replicator of food that runs on water and ended up in the cloud layer. Making it rain food is just an extension of its function but as it grows out of control it starts making other weather patterns that are more actively destructive.
• In Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door, Mars' weather is man-made, and each domed city controls its weather at a control station. Faye breaks into one and threatens the workers there so that they will make it rain, as part of the Bebop crew's plan to stop a terrorist.
• Igor: In the backstory, the country of Malaria was once a land of farmers until dark gloomy storm clouds rolled in and never left, killing their crops, which lead their king to invent an evil invention economy by blackmailing the world every year with a deadly weapon. In the climax, it's revealed that the "beacon of evil" atop the king's castle was actually this, meaning that the king deliberately tricked his kingdom into becoming evil, making them believe that it was the only way to survive.
• Jonny Quest vs. the Cyber Insects features one via a stealth satellite.
• Justice League vs. Teen Titans: As in several other versions, Weather Wizard's "wand" is a device that can let him control the weather.
• WALL•E: According to supplemental material, the MegaCorp Buy 'n Large established a Global Weather Control System made of satellites that would change and control the weather in the areas that they were in. The system worked so well that Buy 'n Large even launched a program giving citizens the ability to book certain weather in the areas where they live, such as scheduling a thunderstorm during a parade so that it will literally "rain on their parade".

    Films — Live-Action 

• Austin Powers: Dr. Evil mentions that in the 1960s, he had a "weather-changing machine that was, in essence, a sophisticated heat beam which we called a 'laser'."
• The Avengers (1998): Sir August De Wynter uses one to extort Great Britain. The Cut Lex Luthor a Check element is slightly subverted in that he does plan to use it to make legitimate money (by "selling" weather to the countries of the world) but squeezes the Villain Ball tight by also threatening to bring natural disasters on the countries that don't comply.

  De Wynter: Rain or shine... all is mine!

• In Back to the Future Part II, Doc mentions a U.S. weather service in 2015, after predicting the exact time rain would stop. It's somewhat unclear whether they actually have the ability to control the weather, predict it with extreme accuracy, or if Doc actually only knew through time travel.
• In the Backstory of The Colony (2013) these were built to fight global warming, but had Gone Horribly Right and created another Ice Age instead.
• Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe (1953 Film Serial). The Ruler tries this in several chapters to either destroy the Earth or intimidate the inhabitants into surrendering to his rule. Methods include cloudseeding to create torrential rains, changing the axis of the Earth or the orbit of the Moon, and creating multiple reflections of the Sun to create heatwaves, drought and firestorms.
• Geostorm: The plot revolves around a system of climate-controlling satellites being turned into weapons and the efforts to restore them.
• Murder by Death: Mr. Twain has a weather device that creates a thunderstorm that prevents our protagonists from leaving the house as per the cliched detective story fashion.
• In Our Man Flint, the Galaxy organization threatens to use its weather control device (which can also cause earthquakes) to bring the world to its knees unless the nations of Earth destroy all of their nuclear weapons, aircraft and navies and accept Galaxy's guidance. Yes, they're Well-Intentioned Extremists.
• All of earth's weather in Overdrawn at the Memory Bank is controlled by the HX368 supercomputer... along with literally everything else. When Fingal's consciousness starts screwing around with the system from the inside-out, he causes untold devastation - such as triggering heat waves in Greenland and blizzards in the Sahara.
• One plays a key role in the plot of Son of Godzilla. A team of scientists develops one in order to solve world hunger and test it out on Solgell Island, where Godzilla and Minya are hanging out. The machine goes haywire during its test however, causing extreme heat and a radioactive storm that creates lots of Big Creepy-Crawlies Godzilla ends up having to fight. In the end, the scientists fix the machine and use it to create a huge snowstorm that allows them to escape, kill all the giant bugs, and put Godzilla and Minya into hibernation.
• The Probe in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home does this as a side effect; it's transmission is so powerful it destabilizes the Earth's atmosphere, causing perpetual superstorms and nearly total cloud cover of the planet.
• The second Williams And Ree movie, subtitled Totem Recall, pitted Bruce and Terry against a mad scientist and his weather machine gone amok.
• The Ultimate Christmas Present is a weather machine that causes it to snow in Los Angeles.
• In Weather Wars (a.k.a. Storm War), a Mad Scientist played by Stacy Keach invents a device that can create any weather on a whim, using simply a cell phone and relay devices, and uses it to lay siege to Washington, D.C. as Disproportionate Retribution for his project's funding being cut. At first, he is only capable of causing basic weather events, such as rain, tornadoes and targeted lightning strikes, but later on, he connects his invention to a decommissioned nuclear power plant, dramatically boosting its power and allowing him to create gigantic hail and ice storms. He is ultimately defeated when the heroes improvise their own version of the system by using satellites and missiles to create tornadoes that destroy his hideout.
• Zoom: Academy for Superheroes freatures an "Outdoor Survival Simulator", which can generate wind, rain, lightning, snow, tornadoes and earthquakes. Our child protagonists use it to beat the ever-lovin' crap out of Chevy Chase.

    Jokes 

    Literature 

• The theme of controlling weather seems to have been very important for Robert A. Heinlein. If a given story briefly mentions that humans mastered weather control, you can be sure that this is the bright future the author would like to live in.
  • In Time for the Stars, the Long Range Foundation exists to invest in research and development that will take decades or longer to pay off, such as the slower-than-light interstellar voyage that makes up the main storyline. The protagonist mentions early on that weather control research is a project started to burn excessive money, unlikely to ever become profitable. When he returns to Earth, he is surprised to learn that the technology has been widely used for years.
  • The Door into Summer has another example.

• Sidney Sheldon's Are You Afraid of the Dark is the story of a think tank that builds technology powerful enough to create hurricanes, tornadoes, and tsunamis.
• In Dune, weather control is widespread, and is achieved with specialized satellites in orbit around a planet.
• In The Giver, though the mechanics of it are never discussed, it's made clear that the Community's leaders know how to control the weather within the confines of the Community. For the people that live there, things like snow and rain are completely unknown, and the sun is always faint enough that no one apparently knows what a "sunburn" is. Fittingly, taking a sled ride in the snow, getting a sunburn, and getting a leg fracture after slipping on ice are some of the first memories that Jonas receives. When he escapes with Gabe, he has to deal with harsh weather for the first time in his life, and nearly freezes to death in the snow.
• Heavy Object:
  • Meterological weapons have been developed which mainly function by inducing rainfall. Civilians use the technology to manage rain patterns while the military can generate torrential downpours as a psychological weapon.
  • The Amaterasu system in Volume 8 is a series of scuttled Objects whose reactors were positioned on the ocean floor. When activated, the waste heat from the reactors could be used to change the major ocean currents which would in turn change global weather patterns to favor the system's creators.
• The gamemakers of The Hunger Games have complete control of the environment in the arena, including the weather and whether it's day or night. They use it several times in the 74th games to up the drama.
• In James and the Giant Peach, the Cloudmen work their sinister magic on Earth, producing all the weather. The heroes witness hailstones being made from handfuls of cloud, a rainbow being painted and lowered to Earth, a snow machine, drums for making thunder; and in a case of When It Rains, It Pours, they become caught up in an absolutely massive cloudburst.
• In Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus, the world of 20 Minutes into the Future is recovering from wars and environmental disasters of the 20th and 21st centuries, and weather control satellites are the only means of keeping the remaining farmland fertile. Unfortunately, the increasing cloud cover means that they will stop being effective at some point, leading to worldwide starvation, contributing to the total collapse of human civilization. The loss of industry will also mean that humans will be unable to repair (or even reach) them.
• A Practical Guide to Evil:
  • One of the Dread Emperors of Praes built artefacts to steal Callow's good weather. They backfired, accelerating the Dread Empire's slow desertification and causing unpredictable weather that ravages the Wasteland to this day. It's eventually justified: Praes is locked in a cycle of self-destructive conquest due to not having enough farmland to sustain its population, with a political culture that glorifies ambition, betrayal, and the creation of wonders at the expense of human life. A weather-controlling artefact is one of the saner ideas the Highborn came up with.
  • In Book 7, a Gambit Pileup for control of the Dread Empire sees its still-stored weather-controlling artefacts turned against its capital, which run for two weeks and delay the battle to come.
• The world of Relic Master depends on these for its climate to even be liveable. Keeping them running is a major conflict.
• In one of the Ringworld novels, the explorers create a living weather control machine by provoking some laser-firing plants to direct their beams at a shallow sea. This causes a huge cloud of steam to rise and sets off a localized rainstorm that continues indefinitely.
• Sonic the Hedgehog Adventure Gamebooks: The sixth and final book in the series Stormin' Sonic has Dr. Robotnik create the Weather Egg to cause climate chaos wherever it went, and Sonic and Tails needed to go to different Zones to stop the Weather Egg.
• In John Scalzi's Starter Villain (2023) one of Jake Baldwin's shell corporations was contracted by the US government to build a laser that can induce rainfall. He delivered, but kept a scaled-up version in his Volcano Lair with sufficient range to shoot down satellites.
• In State of Fear, ecoterrorists plan to create a tsunami, calve an iceberg, and induce flash flooding and hurricanes.
• In the Vampire Hunter D novels, weather control systems used to be ubiquitous in the now-extinct vampire civilization, used for practical purposes as well as entertainment, and were occasionally even weaponized. They, like everything else is breaking down After the End, resulting in some highly unpredictable or just plain unnatural weather patterns in large portions of the planet.
• In Normand Lester's science thriller Verglas, the 1998 icestorm that struck the Montréal area is an experiment by The Pentagon in the development of a climactic weapon that went wrong. The book speculate that ULF waves generated by a transmitter at Siple Station, a US base in Antarctica, caused the icestorm by affecting the ionosphere over Québec.
• Ben Bova's The Weathermakers is the story of a government agency that controls the weather.

    Live-Action TV 

• The Avengers (1960s): The villain in the episode "A Surfeit of H20" has technology that can create localized rainstorms severe enough to drown his opponents in rainwater.
• Blake's 7: In "Star One", drought, torrential rains, and snowstorms are devastating Federation planets as the climate control systems controlled by their Master Computer go haywire, creating chaos and famine as a precursor to an Alien Invasion.
• Eureka: The season 2 episode "Unpredictable" features one, created by Dr. Whiticus and some others. The ocal weatherman uses it to cause some natural desasters only he is able to predict to make himself look like a hero. It backfires as the machine causes a storm that could destroy the town.
• One of the most popular and famous storylines of General Hospital involves disabling one so that the evil Cassadines will not freeze the world. No, really. Luckily, Luke and Laura, the show's Official Couple, manage to save the day from the Big Bad who is controlling it.
• Get Smart:
  • The episode "Ice Station Siegfried" features one. It's a giant fan that blows cold air to freeze the world.
  • The Made-for-TV Movie Get Smart, Again! features the criminal organization KAOS with a weather control machine that they use to hold the world hostage.
• Lost in Space: The eponymous villain of the episode "The Space Trader" uses a weather control machine to force the Robinsons to depend on him for supplies.
• The New Adventures of Beans Baxter: In "Beans Under the Weather", Beans' younger brother Scooter invents a weather-making machine for a science fair, and UGLI schemes to use it for their own ends.
• In the three-part The Six Million Dollar Man/The Bionic Woman crossover episode "Kill Oscar", the Mad Scientist Doctor Franklin has a Weather-Control Machine.
• An episode of Sliders has a world ruined by the U.S. and Soviet weather-control machines.
• Stargate SG-1:
  • The Touchstone is an Ancient artifact that keeps the weather on one planet idyllic. When it is removed, the weather there quickly goes out of control.
  • In their early appearances, Asgard vessels can apparently summon thunderclouds and lightning for visual effect when they swoop in and get their Gunship Rescue on. This is dropped in later seasons, as they stop flying their ships in atmosphere.
• In Star Trek, a lot of planets have weather control machines. The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "True Q" involves a pair of Q turned human who were killed by a tornado that shouldn't have even happened thanks to the Federation's all-powerful weather-control machine (it was caused by the Q). The Ferengi set theirs to have constant downpours, and in Deep Space Nine's "Let He Who is Without Sin...", we learn that Pleasure Planet Risa has machines that keep the weather constantly pleasant.
• In TekWar, humans have developed a mastery of the weather, but one episode focuses on terrorists hijacking the weather control system and holding the government for ransom, threatening to generate a massive storm if their demands aren't met.
• The 1990s remake of The Tomorrow People has a villain who is an American cereal magnate with such a machine; in a more thoughtful example than most, his Evil Plan is to use it to destroy the corn harvest of the United States in order to make his own stockpiles more valuable, a la Egypt in The Bible.
• Wonder Woman (1975): In "Judgment from Outer Space", Andros controls the weather through his amulet.

  Bjornsen: Let us start with your device Dr. Andros. You will explain it!
  Andros: Even if I were willing it would be impossible. You don't have the scientific knowledge. It's not a machine. It's part of my mind — perhaps part of my soul.

    Radio 

• The Adventures of Superman has one of these made by Lois Lane's uncle. He decides that The World Is Not Ready after criminals use the device to create storms so that they can loot.
• In an episode of The Men from the Ministry, a scientist, angry for being accused of being crazy, fills the main character's office with the same machine he was laughed for minutes earlier. Now seen the power of the machine, the main characters promise to look over it, but start using it to help/cheat Britain win several sports. Then they find out that changing weather in one place causes it to change in other places, and the two end up jumping around the globe trying to fix what they started, but keep messing it up even more.

    Tabletop Games 

• BattleTech: Weather control satellites were among the many technologies lost during the fall of the Star League and the ensuing Succession Wars. These were used for both making planets habitable and keeping them habitable.
• GURPS Ultra-Tech: There are weather control satellites described, but they're huge, expensive and limited in effect.
• Hollow Earth Expedition: In the supplement Mysteries of the Hollow Earth, in the city of Atlantis, the Vril-ya priests can use the Great Crystal to control the weather, including calling down lightning strikes.
• Men In Black The Roleplaying Game: The Weather-Control Device was created by the T'skrine aliens. It can alter air pressure, temperature and humidity at a range of up to 5 miles. These changes can cause precipitation (rain or snow), a heat wave or fog.
• Space 1889: The Weather Control Ray is a possible invention in the main rules. It allows the user to bring on storms or disperse them.
• Warhammer: The Celestial Hurricanums are a smaller-scale and weaponized variant of this. They resemble giant orreries on wheels powered by one of Teclis' Orbs of Sorcery and, while usually used to study the sky and stars, can be wheeled onto the battlefield to bring the fury of the skies against the enemy. Their Storm of Shemtek spells targets an enemy unit with a random weather phenomenon decided by a dice roll: this can result in light rain that does nothing of note, a blizzard that does a little damage, a tornado that randomly spins the unit around, a powerful lightning bolt, or a devastating meteor strike.
• Warhammer 40,000: The Imperium of Man, Eldar, and Tyranids are all capable of massive weather alterations, but only the Necrons take it a step further and use weather control for military purposes, though they reserve it for a larger scale than most games.

    Video Games 

• In City of Heroes, one of the Arcs on the Hero-side involves stopping Nemesis from using his Weather Control Machine to destroy or conquer the city! Of course, Nemesis is nothing if not 'old skool'...
• In Civilization: Beyond Earth, the Weather Controller is a mid-game satellite unit. Rather than being a superweapon, it improves the food yield of land in its area of effect and can permanently create new basic resources.
• Command & Conquer:
  • In Red Alert 2, one of these is the Allied superweapon. Somewhat justified in that the entire American nuclear arsenal was destroyed in the game's intro, so they had to turn to new ideas for superweapons.
  • The Scrin's Storm Column in Tiberium Wars have the ability to artificially induce storms which, in addition to being a powerful defensive structure, benefits their air units.
• In Criminal Case: Pacific Bay, one of the main plots of the Jazz Town district is putting a stop to a weather machine that the Arc Villain stole from the military and now's been using to wreak havoc all over the city by summoning destructive hurricanes.
• Die Spinne from Crimson Skies: The High Road to Revenge has this as one of their superweapons. It is mounted on one very large and incredibly tough zeppelin battleship.
• In The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, it is revealed that the Dwemer built one (known as the Karstangz-Beharn) in their city of Bamz-Amschend. After their disappearance, the city of Mournhold was built over top of it. Almalexia will command you to use it in the Tribunal expansion to create ash storms in Mournhold as a show of her power. It will reset to normal following completion of the Tribunal main quest, but nothing is stopping you from going back to it and setting it to create whatever weather you want.
• In Elements of Destruction, you play as an insane fired weatherman with a weather-control machine, and attack your enemies with earthquakes, tornadoes and thunderbolts.
• Inverted in the EXA_PICO series. The weather control devices (called the Musical Corridor/Wings of Hynemos depending on the game) are part of the devices that allow people to survive at the extreme altitude at which they've been forced to live.
• Fallout:
  • Fallout: New Vegas: The Old World Blues DLC has an experimental weather control machine in one of the labs, which you can use to make it rain over a small model of Higgs Village. Lore-wise, however, it's implied that Big MT's weather experiments are responsible for the unnaturally strong storms of the Divide.
  • Fallout 4: The Contraptions Workshop DLC includes a host of fireworks, in particular three types that can alter the current status of the weather, generating rain, a radstorm, and clearing the skies of either of the two. Strangely, despite being a highly practical technology that has the potential to save countless lives by manually creating squalls of non-radioactive rain for crop farming and dispelling irradiated systems blowing in from the Glowing Sea, it has no relevance to the game lore and is purely for aesthetics.
• Final Fantasy XIII-2 has one under the control of the Archylte Steppe nomads. Each weather condition has a different effect on the monster population: Sunny and rainy bring out more fauna-like monsters, cloudy spawns goblins and machines, and stormy brings out droves of Cie'th.
• In Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor, you can build these on your planets if you're Arcean. Partial subversion in that they're very much useful, increasing the quality of planets substantially.
• In The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, the Ether Medallion clears up some rain to open one dungeon.
• In Limbo, you have to operate a machine to start a downpour.
• Weather Control is a planetary improvement in Master of Orion 2. It greatly increases farm productivity.
• These show up all the time in various games in the Mega Man series, usually without any particular relevance to the plot, but just for fun effects on various levels. Made important in Mega Man Battle Network 2 when the computer suppressing the planet's weather is hacked, threatening to unleash years' worth of earthquakes and storms on the planet. Also in Battle Network 6.
• The Luminoth of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes have this as one of their wonders. It couldn't fix all the problems a recent disaster caused, though.
• Monster Hunter Wilds: The ancient civilization of Wyveria, located in the heart of the Forbidden Lands, had such advanced technology that they could manipulate meteorological phenomena, creating the Sandtides in the Windward Plains to drive away monsters, the Downpours in the Scarlet Forest to cleanse poisons, the Firesprings in the Oil Basin to produce precious minerals, and manipulating the gravity in the Iceshard Cliffs to build their cities — which also created the freezing Frostwinds.
• Some of the symbols that can be inscribed on the tablets in Myst V: End of Ages cause the affected Age's weather to change.
• Ōkami features one of these in Kamui. It is used by demons to unleash a massive blizzard on the citizens of Wep'Keer.
• In Pajama Sam 2, the World Wide Weather corporation does this as a massive floating factory in the clouds. And its CEO is Mother Nature. In the comic book packed with the game, it's used for evil, but the place Sam discovers on his own manages Earth's weather as it should be... until he accidentally messes up the equipment.
• In Paper Mario 64, Huff N. Puff and his minions use of these to cover Flower Fields in clouds. The overcast is so bad that the sun actually falls into depression and leaves the sky, placing the citizens of Flower Fields (all of whom are plants) at risk.
• Climatrol in Phantasy Star II. Meddling with it nearly floods the entire planet. Phantasy Star III also has a similar machine to control the tides and even the moons, but here it is justified as the world is actually a giant spaceship. In Phantasy Star IV, Nurvus has a weather control system, but Wren mentions that people learned from their previous mistake, and it only has enough control to mend the damage after which it will be shut down.
• In Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness, the evil organization Cipher creates artificial storms to keep ships away from their base, Citadark Isle.
• Ratchet & Clank:
  • The Tornado Launcher and Thundersmack weapons from Tools of Destruction and All 4 One, respectively. The former launches out a disc that creates a tornado that sucks in enemies and throws them about, while the latter forcibly conjures up a storm cloud that will target enemies with directed bolts of lighting.
  • In Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault, Captain Qwark has a weather-controlling device that he used to create sunny weather during his presidential events. It later gets hijacked by the game's villain, who uses it to turn the normally sunny planet of Ebaro into a blizzard-ravaged snow level.
• A weather plant can be built in The Settlers 5: Heritage of Kings. It can be used to freeze the rivers, allowing you to cross them — or to thaw the ice, drowning the enemies trying to do the same.
• One of the new rewards introduced in The Sims 2: Seasons is the "Weathernaught 57X", a machine that allows you to change the weather or speed up or slow down the progression of seasons.
• Sir Raleigh in Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus has a storm machine in the shape of an airship that he uses to cause squalls and sink ships to "salvage" them.
• Sonic & Knuckles, Mushroom Hill Zone Act 2, shows the plant life changing you progress through the level. Things start off green, then go to orange, then a dull yellow. Then, just before the boss fight, you destroy the machine that's causing it (a radar dish shooting lightning into the sky) and the level immediately reverts to lush and green.
• During one mission in Spandex Force, a minor villain called the Blizzard Wizard used a specialized machine to make it snow during summertime. When the main character found him out and he gloatingly asked who else could possibly have done such a thing, they started listing half-a-dozen other people with winter-based abilities.
• In Starbase Orion, Orbital Weather Controllers can be built on colonies to improve farming yields.
• Star Fox:
  • Star Fox: The level Titania starts in a blizzard, and halfway though you deactivate the weather control machine to clear the sky.
  • Star Fox: Assault: Inverted in the fourth mission, where the machine keeps the frequent blizzards on Fichina in check, and needs to be repaired before the planet becomes completely uninhabitable again.
• In Stardew Valley, you can craft rain totems and use them to make the weather rainy.
• In Tesla: The Weather Man, this is the main premise of the game. Tesla has one of these, and he uses it to solve platforming challenges.
• In Touhou Hisouten ~ Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, Tenshi Hinanawi's Sword of Hisou/Scarlet Perception has the power to alter the weather based upon a person's temperament. She uses it to instigate Weather Dissonance, among other things.
• The Utawarerumono trilogy features the Amaterasu weather-control satellite, which maintains the warm climate of the region. Without it, it's stated that the entire region would fall into an Ice Age. It also has the capability to fire tremendous bursts of energy as a Kill Sat, though only maybe two living people have the ability to order it to do that. To the pre-gunpowder current inhabitants of Earth, they have no idea that Amaterasu exists, and interpret the rare occasions of someone activating its Kill Sat function as "divine punishment" on whatever unfortunate country is targeted.
• The goal of the protagonist of Viewfinder is to find one such machine hidden in a virtual reality in order to restore the climate in the real world to something human-friendly.
• WildStar has several, left behind by the Eldan. The first one so far is a blizzard machine in the Northern Wilds that players are tasked to turn off, as it is making rescue efforts all but impossible. A second one causes the massive tornadoes and strong winds in Galeras. Many more are waiting to be discovered.

    Visual Novels 

• Soul of Sovereignty: It's implied that weather in the Mosaic is artificially controlled, as Loïc expresses that he has come to appreciate the cold weather in Tarn because "[a] sudden chill against [his] face feels refreshing when [he] know[s] it wasn't decided by committee." In Chapter 2, this is confirmed, with Fel's narration demonstrating that there are artificially controlled air currents to keep people from going stir-crazy and that she'd never felt the actual wind until she managed to head up to the roof of her school building on a ventilation day.

    Web Animation 

• The pilot episode of GEOWeasel focuses on a rival evildoer using a rain-making device as part of a convoluted plot to take over the world.
• One of the Cheat Commandos cartoons from Homestar Runner has Gunhaver speculating that Blue Laser are planning to buy a machine that will "turn babies into gold. Or screw with the weather."
• One of these shows up for a bit in Red vs. Blue. Sarge had been building one inside of Lopez, but he was never able to find a critical component (D-batteries, because apparently Sarge could only find them in gas stations, where they're too expensive). O'Malley gets it to work, but an overload results in the weather machine creating an explosion that sends the Reds and Blues forward several hundred years in the future. The concept is ruthlessly mocked in a deleted scene later on, as Tex discusses the uses for a weather control machine in space.

    Webcomics 

• Girl Genius:
  • In the "Gil Deals With It" arc, "It" is a whole army of "war stompers", and the way Gil deals with it is <CRAKOOM!>
  • Mechanicsburg's built-in defences take but a few seconds to turn any street into one big rainstorm cloud for instant decontamination. Repairman:

    A town run by

    the Heterodynes

    , attacked on a regular basis for

    hundreds of years?

    Gas weapons are

    easy!
  • The new experimental Corbettite train is seen getting loaded with an "auto-cranked storm generator".
• In Gunnerkrigg Court, Chapter 19, the characters see some sort of power station in the middle of a lake. The real purpose of the station remains unknown, but its observed effects include the creation of clouds, massive lightning bolts, and brief downpours.
• This "changing seasons montage" in Keychain of Creation turns out to just be Misho playing with a weather machine.
• In this strip of Ozy and Millie the latter wants to use one built by Ozy's cousin, Isolde, so that winter would be gone. After learning it only makes "mini-tornadoes" she tries to build one herself (she later called it a Plot Device instead as it failed to do anything).
• In Sarab, the Hubs are facilities that control weather, among other natural phenomena.
• As this Shortpacked! strip shows, Destro isn't interested in the "legitimate" approach.

    Websites 

• Orion's Arm has a relatively realistic take on this with weather machines. These are balloons that float high in the atmosphere and come in two varieties. The less advanced variety uses mirrors to either reflect sunlight from above (for a cooling effect) or to reflect infrared radiation from the ground below (for a warming effect). The more advanced variety can actively absorb and transmit energy, allowing them to also generate power or act as weapons. Larger versions of weather machines can be used to terraform planets.

    Web Videos 

• Empires SMP: The campfire at the world spawn in Season 2 is one. Putting out the normal fire with a shovel turns it to soul fire and can create thunderstorms, while the weather remains sunny if the campfire is normal fire.
• Stampy's Lovely World: Stampy builds one in his Secret Base in Episode 756, "Giant Gadget". Naturally, it gets sabotaged four episodes later for HitTheTarget's next evil plan involving Charged Creepers, created by striking Creepers with lightning in Minecraft.

    Western Animation 

• O-Zone from the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog episode "Sonic Gets Thrashed" is a robot built by Dr. Robotnik to be this. He was rejected and thrown into Scrap Valley because he can only make lousy weather, specifically snowstorms.
• In The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3, Kooky creates the Power Shower, causing a rainstorm that lasts two weeks over the Mushroom Kingdom.
• The Beatles (1965): In "I Feel Fine", the boys tinker with a movie studio's weather machine which Paul pooh-poohed as being as artificial as Hollywood itself is. Actor Dick Dashing takes the brunt of the boys' horseplay.
• Ben 10:
  • In the Ben 10 episode "Monster Weather", the souped-up Weather Satellite S.A.M. starts controlling the weather after being struck by lightning.
  • The DNAliens also possess weather control machines in the Ben 10: Alien Force episode "Everyone Talks About the Weather".
• In the Birdman (1967) episode "Versus Cumulus, the Storm King", Cumulus has machines that can create lightning storms, fog and clouds.
• Bucky O'Hare and the Toad Wars! features the Climate Converter, used by the Toads to turn Bucky's homeworld into a swamp.
• Captain Flamingo: In "Just Looking!", one of Milo's failed solutions to get everyone to leave their hiding places in order to find Sanjay's sisters was him using a weather maker to make rain, but after it got exposed with water from the rain, it explodes, as the item isn't waterproof.
• The Captain Caveman episode "Stormfront and Weathergirl" from The Flintstone Comedy Show features two weather-controlling villains stealing a weather satellite to launch into orbit to amplify the range of their weather-controlling powers to cover (and conquer) the entire planet.
• Professor Nimnul once builds one of these on Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers. It's a flying box that can disguise itself via artificial clouds.
• Baron Greenback's dastardly plan in the Danger Mouse episode "The Next Ice Age Begins at Midnight" involves one of these. Stiletto:

  I know why you call it that.

  
  Greenback:

  Why?

  
  Stiletto:

  'Cause you don't know

  "weather"

  it will work!

  Ow!
• In an episode of Dastardly & Muttley in Their Flying Machines, Klunk builds an airborne weather control machine.
• Family Guy: In "I Never Met the Dead Man", Stewie builds one for the sole purpose of trying to wipe out broccoli.
• The Garfield Show: Hiram "Hi" Pressure from the two-parter "Unfair Weather" uses a machine to control the weather. Unfortunately, his operation is bought out by a Corrupt Corporate Executive who duplicates the machine and uses it to cause a devastating Heat Wave.
• George of the Jungle: A low-tech approach is used in a Super Chicken episode when a rash of elephants in the city leads Super Chicken and Fred to an Indian maharajah, who has shipped the elephants strategically for their weight to tip the earth's poles so he that can enjoy snow.
• G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero: In "The Revenge of Cobra", Cobra uses a device called the Weather Dominator as a superweapon to extort the world.
• Hilda: In Episode 10, Mad Scientist Victoria van Gale has one. Powered by a baby-Weather Spirit.
• In the Jimmy Two-Shoes episode "A Cold Day in Miseryville", Heloise builds one called the Snowberator 901 ("The first 900 didn't work out") to give Miseryville its First Snow.
• Josie and the Pussycats run afoul of the sinister Scorpion, who plans to drill into the Earth's core to derive enough power for his weather machine to unleash cataclysmic storms. He's defeated when Melody, idly playing with its buttons, creates a small tornado that wrecks his escape helicopter.
• An episode of Kappa Mikey has Ozu building a weather machine because he's tired of the weather ruining location shoots of Lilly Mu.
• There have been at least five weather machine usages on Kim Possible. The first is seen in the background of an R&D, but its function is mentioned to show how advanced the facility is. The second example is used to attack Canada. In the third instance, the previous machine is reused to bring an army of evil snowmen to life and cause a brief raining of frogs. (Wait... what?) The fourth is created by "Evil Ron" and dubbed "The Mega Weather Generator". The fifth is used to make it always winter (but never Christmas). The appropriate Continuity Nods occur. One of these weather machines is even procured from a used weather machine dealership. Rather than pay, Drakken opts to simply mug the salesman for the keys and steal it, which he somehow doesn't expect despite supervillains likely making up the majority if not entirety of his customer base.
• The Magic School Bus has one. Justified as part of an Edutainment Show. Ralphie uses it to create a massive storm.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: The weather in Equestria is controlled by direct manipulation of cloud formations by Pegasus with some resources from a weather factory in the city of Cloudsdale. This is likely a factor in the great prosperity of Equestria, as it pretty much ensures bumper crops every year (provided there isn't a blight). In fact, the concept of uncontrolled weather is alien to the ponies, and one of their many reasons for fearing the Everfree Forest is the way that its weather could change on its own.
• Olliver's Adventures: In "Ice Storm", Olliver discovers that the titular storm being experienced that day was caused by a disgruntled weatherman. As revenge for no one watching his weather reports, the weatherman was using a machine to create the storm and freeze the world.
• Oscar's Orchestra: Thaddius Vent uses one in the episode "The Four Seasons". The heroes end up commandeering it and burying his palace under a few feet of snow.
• Phineas and Ferb: In "Leave the Busting to Us!", Doofenshmirtz plans to use his Gloominator 3000... -inator to launch weather pellets into the clouds, plunging the tri-state area into a new ice age.
• The Simpsons: In the episode "You Only Move Twice", Homer and his Nuclear Reactor team are way ahead of Globex's Germ Warfare and Weather Machine divisions.
• Star Wars: Clone Wars: Though it's never explained how or why, it's implied that the activities of the Techno Union were screwing with the geothermal activity of planet Nelvaan and causing the winter weather that Obi-wan and Anakin observed. In any case, as soon as Anakin destroys the crystal core of their machine, the ice and snow immediately begins thawing.
• In the 1973/74 Superfriends episode "The Weather Maker", an underwater nuclear-powered jet engine can control the weather by changing the course of the Gulf Stream.
• Tangled: The Series has the Demanitus Device, a machine built by Lord Demanitus eons ago to change the direction of the wind and instantly rid Corona of any Hostile Weather, in this case, Zhan Tiri's destructive Endless Winter.
• In an episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987), the Stone Warriors use a "Weather Satellite". They go through a couple less-dangerous settings (partly cloudy, mild showers) before setting it to "Total Chaos".
• Transformers:
  • One of Megatron's frequent Artifact of Doom searches in The Transformers turns up the Pearl of Bahoudin, which turns out to be one of these.
  • Referenced in Transformers: Prime. When natural disasters happen across the globe Agent Fowler sarcastically asks if the Decepticons have built a weather machine. Ratchet responds with "One that powerful, highly unlikely."
  • In Transformers: Rescue Bots, a weather machine is used to make it snow in the summer.
• Simon Bar Sinister of Underdog has used two. One is his cloud machine in "The Big Shrink", which he uses to make it rain his shrinking water over the city to shrink everyone to the size of his thumb. Later, in "Weathering the Storm", he combines this with an Ominous Pipe Organ.
• Young Justice (2010): In "Endgame", the Magnetic Field Disruptors planted at locations around the world by Black Beetle each cause various natural disasters (lightning storms, an underwater volcanic fissure, tornadoes) around their respective locations by eroding the Earth's magnetosphere, resulting in a Natural Disaster Cascade, although this is the precursor to the MFDs building up enough power to engulf the planet in an obliterating energy chrysalis.

    Real Life 

• There is one major form of real-life weather control known as "cloud seeding", which doesn't involve a machine, but instead putting substances into clouds so the rain drops somewhere else. Results have been rather mixed, but the technique is still used fairly frequently.
  • Yes, the Yanks with Tanks tried it in The Vietnam War, in something called Operation Popeye in 1966-7. When revealed to the press, weather modification for military purposes was banned by Congress and then by an international agreement.
    • Except when it's done within U.S. borders, apparently, since cloud seeding is regularly performed over the various remote military installations in California and Nevada (Edwards AFB, White Sands, etc). It's considered more effective there because there aren't a whole lot of clouds over those unholy wastelands in the first place. It seems to work, but it is unclear if it actually works to an effective degree.
• Cannon-like devices that blast powerful columns of air into oncoming thunderstorms have been used by farmers to try to disrupt the formation of hailstones, protecting delicate crops over a limited area. Evidence that they work is dubious at best, however.
• The Canadian Broadcasting Centre says this is a real-life weather control machine.
• Recently, its been reported that Abu Dhabi scientists have been able to use ionizers to create rain, thunder-, and hailstorms. The results aren't conclusive yet. The best that can be said is that it has rained more than usual after switching the ionizers on, during a dry season when it shouldn't be raining much at all.
• The British science program me Bang Goes the Theory showed the actual manufacture of a cloud in a machine, and then the wind, lightning, rain and snow that came with it.
• Various weather simulators exist, which can reproduce the effects of intense winds, downpours, wind-blown sand or dust, and even lightning on a small scale. Most are used to test materials and construction techniques to ensure they are weather-resistant, or to re-create harsh weather conditions to which cars or planes might be subjected.
• The Austrian psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich (who ironically went quite crazy later in life and died in prison) was an amateur inventor who designed a purported weather-control machine called a "cloudbuster". He believed he could harness a mystical form of energy he called "orgone" and use it to create rain and also shoot down UFOs. Unfortunately for him, he was arrested by the FDA for peddling quack treatments for every disease based on his orgone theory and his machines were ordered to be destroyed. His story is dramatized in the Kate Bush song "Cloudbusting" and the music video depicts Reich's son using one of the machines.

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