If 100-year floods happen every 100 years, San Diego had better be prepared this winter.

The strongest El Niño on record is brewing in the central Pacific, and the potential for a super soaking continues to grow. But no matter what El Niño delivers, there will be one big difference between this winter and a century ago: A famous rainmaker will not be involved this time around.

The floods that came after the record-breaking rains of January 1916 are still considered the biggest weather disaster in San Diego history. Twenty-two people died. Bridges, roads and rail lines washed out. Dams collapsed, sending huge waves crashing through the communities below. Houses floated away on raging currents. And 5 feet of water flowed down Broadway in downtown San Diego.

It all happened just weeks after the San Diego City Council agreed to pay Charles Hatfield — who preferred to call himself a “moisture accelerator” — $10,000 if he filled Lake Morena.

Morena, a city reservoir in the mountains east of town, filled to overflowing in less than four weeks. Whether coaxed by Hatfield or not, the rains that month added about 10 billion gallons to the reservoir and forever changed the city’s approach to water management and flood control.

Hatfield wasn’t paid a dime.

But his name lives on, including in a history exhibit about him that will last through Nov. 29 at the downtown San Diego library.

‘Clouds need tickling’

Larry Brimner, 66, grew up in North Park and later graduated from El Cajon Valley High School. He was always captivated by Hatfield’s story.

“Every time there was a dry spell when I was young, the (San Diego) Union would always do a story about Charles Hatfield,” said Brimner, who has written more than 165 books. “I was fascinated that he knew how to make it rain.”

Could he?

Hatfield, a sewing machine salesman in Los Angeles, was sure he could. Shortly after the turn of the century, he managed to convince many people in L.A. that his “rain enhancement” experiments in the local mountains had delivered downpours to the drought -stricken area. He later successfully fulfilled contracts to bring rain to Hemet; San Angelo, Texas; and other communities.

Brimner, who has authored many books on civil rights and social justice geared to young readers, decided to delve into the story behind the somewhat secretive rainmaker. He spent about a year and half combing through newspaper, library and other archives, as well as talking with Hatfield’s descendants. His book, “The Rain Wizard,” was published by Calkins Creek and released in September.

Basically, Hatfield practiced what appeared to be a primitive form of cloud seeding. He built towers, carted a secret blend of chemicals to the top, then lit the concoction on fire. The fumes wafted into the heavens.

“It is simply a matter of working with the natural elements,” Hatfield told the San Diego Union in 1913. “There are times when the clouds need tickling. If one knows how to tease or coax them a trifle, the results are often pleasing.”

MORE ABOUT CHARLES HATFIELD

“The Rain Wizard: The Amazing, Mysterious True Life of Charles Mallory Hatfield,” by Larry Dane Brimner, was released in September. It won the Eureka! Gold award for children’s nonfiction from the California Reading Association. $16.95

San Diego’s Central Library downtown has an exhibit titled “Rainmaker” that will run through Nov. 29. The exhibit recaps Charles Hatfield’s time in San Diego and the devastating floods of 1916. Included are some instruments, donated by Hatfield’s brother, that he used in his “rain enhancement” operations. The exhibit also looks at water and drought through the perspective of 12 local artists. 330 Park Blvd., in the art gallery on the library’s ninth floor. Noon to 5 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday and noon to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday (closed Monday and Thanksgiving day). The library has more Hatfield documents and photographs in its Rare Books Room. Call (619) 236-5800 for more information.

In December 1915, the San Diego City Council, which had been prodded to hire Hatfield but was hesitant, decided the city needed his “pleasing” results. On Dec. 13, the council ordered the city attorney to draw up a contract to pay Hatfield $10,000 if he managed to fill Lake Morena within a year.

Brimner, who now has a home in Little Italy, wrote that a confident Hatfield left that morning to get his moisture-accelerating equipment to begin work by the first of the year — without signing a contract.

Was he really needed?

The council had read many stories in the San Diego Union and the Evening Tribune that talked of a drought. But one apparently didn’t exist.

Brimner wrote that a story in the Union in early November 1915 said: “The first rainfall of the season fell last night — (and) broke the longest dry spell in the history of San Diego.”

The city did have a dry summer and early fall, as it often does. But the previous year, which some scientists said was likely an El Niño year, was very wet. The 1914-15 rainfall season brought 14.41 inches of rain to San Diego — nearly 40 percent more than normal. Only one of the prior seven years had been significantly drier than normal.

According to Brimner, John Spreckels, who owned both local newspapers, and fellow businessman Elisha Babcock had a vested interest in making it appear that San Diego was, or could be, flush with water. Both were big landowners in the region, and with the Panama-California Exhibition extended into 1916, they saw a chance to impress potential investors.

“Spreckels and Babcock knew there was money to be made if only San Diego had water,” Brimner wrote. “Talk of drought was one way to spur the city’s political leaders to look for [water] sources other than those already in use.”

A drought around the turn of the century and water-rights disputes with local farmers were also fresh in the council members’ minds when they decided to bring in Hatfield, who, if nothing else, had impeccable timing.

San Diego was likely in a wet pattern already by the time Hatfield arrived in early January 1916 at Lake Morena — at 3,000 feet and about 65 miles east of town. The city recorded 2.6 of rain in December, far more than usual.

Not long after Hatfield, who was accompanied by his younger brother Joel, set up his tower and started releasing his chemicals, it started to rain lightly. By Jan. 10, drizzles turned to downpours as Hatfield’s contraptions continued to belch out smelly fumes. On the 14th, the rains came even heavier and did not relent for days.

By Jan. 17, Brimner wrote, “The city was consumed with chaos as runoff entered once-empty gullies ... The San Diego River, once just a trickle, breached its banks and stretched a mile across from side to side. Rowboats ferried stranded people across flooded streets.”

Then the rain let up and the skies cleared — for a few days. By the 25th, another round of multiday, intense downpours turned San Diego into a “miniature Venice,” Brimner wrote. Water rose all around the county, and roads and bridges that escaped damage a week earlier collapsed or were in danger of collapse.

At 5:05 p.m. on Jan. 27, the Lower Otay Dam broke, sending a 40-foot wall of water into the valley below. Only one of 24 houses in the valley below was left standing, and many residents were killed.

The Hatfield brothers were unaware of the death and destruction west of the mountains because they left Lake Morena shortly after they saw 4 feet of water spilling over the top of the dam, which held. Charles was satisfied that he had fulfilled the contract and would collect his $10,000.

But the Hatfields were not treated as conquering heroes in San Diego. In fact, they had to lay low after an anonymous caller threatened to lynch the brothers because of the damage the city had endured.

The next month, City Attorney Terence Cosgrove insisted that San Diego wasn’t obligated to pay Hatfield anything. Only some of the water that spilled over the Lake Morena dam could be attributed to Hatfield, he said. The City Council voted 3-2 not to honor the agreement.

Brimner suspects that even before the rain started falling, Cosgrove had no intention of paying Hatfield no matter what happened that winter. Cosgrove also knew that if the city admitted that Hatfield was working for it, the floodgates would open for legal claims against the city.

Hatfield later filed suit seeking the $10,000 he said he was promised. Cosgrove told Hatfield’s attorney he would instruct the council to authorize payment to Hatfield — if Hatfield would sign an agreement assuming responsibility for all flood claims, which by then had topped $3 million. The case lingered into 1917.

“Charles was hoping it (the rain) would be considered an act of Charles,” Brimner said. “But the courts decided it was an act of God. Hatfield knew he had been beaten.”

But the case paid off handsomely in advertising. Once word got out about what he “produced” in San Diego, drought-stricken regions, some as far away as Honduras, sought and paid for Hatfield’s services. Books, and much later a Broadway play and a Hollywood movie (“The Rainmaker”), were based very loosely on his exploits.

Atmospheric rivers

Just what did happen in January 1916, and what role did Hatfield play?

Miguel Miller, a forecaster at the National Weather Service ’s Rancho Bernardo office who has studied the region’s weather history, said San Diego County was likely hit by two separate “atmospheric rivers” of moisture that January.

Scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla have extensively studied these bands of moisture, which sometimes stretch thousands of miles long. The bands tend to hit California every few years, and they are major contributors to both flooding and the state’s water supply.

An atmospheric river can be like a fire hose on full blast, pointed at the same part of the state for several days. In spots where the mountain slopes align with the winds, rainfall totals of 20, even 30 inches are not unheard of.

Miller said from the rainfall records, it appears that one atmospheric river hit Southern California in mid-January 1916 and another arrived the last week.

“Nature came together to give us an extreme event,” Miller said. “We usually see an atmospheric river every two, three or four years. That year, it happened twice in one month.”

Did Hatfield have any involvement?

“It’s kind of interesting to speculate: Did he or didn’t he?” Miller said. “I think we have good evidence he just got lucky.”

If Hatfield released a bunch of chemicals into the atmosphere at Lake Morena, it could have added to the local rainfall totals, Miller said.

“I think the science is good enough,” Miller said. “He put more stuff in the sky for microscopic water droplets to grab onto, what are called condensation nuclei. But I don’t see how that would impact the whole county, particularly points west of his enhancement procedures.”

Rainfall in the watershed that fed Lake Morena topped 20 inches from Jan. 14-30, 1916, and 28 inches for all of January — more than the normal annual total. But other county mountain stations were even wetter; the Cuyamaca Reservoir recorded more than 36 inches.

(San Diego had 7.56 inches for the month, at the time the most ever in January. Januaries in 1993, with 9.09 inches, and 1995, with 8.06 inches, were wetter.)

Heavy, flood-producing rains were also recorded in January 1916 in Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Riverside and San Bernardino counties — and in Mexico.

At most, Hatfield’s chemicals affected a few square miles, and even that is debatable because no one knows what he was sending skyward.

Hatfield was a mysterious man, Brimner said. Many people didn’t know he had been married for years until his wife filed for divorce. He never revealed his chemical formula for “coaxing” rain from the clouds.

“I’m not sure the chemicals he used had any impact,” Brimner said. “Since his formula disappeared when he died, there’s no way to replicate his experiment.”

Was Hatfield a con artist, the kind of flimflam man common in the early 20th century? Brimner doesn’t think so.

“He wanted to be considered a serious scientist,” Brimner said. “People speculate that he was a good weatherman — better than the weather (bureau).

“My gut tells me that he actually felt that he was making it rain. Whether facts bear that out, we don’t know.”