This is just wild and too freaking cool!
The mysterious booming sound that’s been rocking a New Jersey town is apparently the result of a homemade “hail cannon” designed by a vineyard owner to protect his crop from bad weather, he and police told The Post.
Rob Butkowski of Hammonton said he’s been firing off the sonically loud cone-shaped homemade contraption — which blasts shock waves up to the sky — to break up cloud formations and scare away birds that eat his grapes.
For weeks, he’s been firing off the thunderous shock waves — which travel 30,000 feet in a 1.5-mile radius — above his five-acre plot, he said.
Did you have any idea we could just blast away clouds and change the weather? I certainly did not. Apparently this has been going on for quite some time…decades even. Just go to Youtube and search for ‘Hail Cannon’ and you will see! Anytime you see a giant rain cloud approaching you could just blast that thing into pieces? And voila! No more rain!
The coolest part — this is totally legal!
“It doesn’t fire projectiles, and it’s not a firearm or an explosive,” Friel said, adding there are no plans to stop him. “It uses gas — and that’s it.” The only possible legal issue would be a noise violation after 10 p.m., which is moot because Butkowski stops using the machine around 8 p.m.
Residents in Butkowski’s town have wondered what the massive ‘sonic booms’ were for weeks and now that the cat is out of the bag, Butkowski doesn’t have any plans to stop shooting storm clouds.
Butkowski, for his part, has no plans to stop firing the cannon, he said. “I’m gonna do whatever I want as long as it’s legal,” he said.
Check this thing out in action! Wow!