When the West was settled it was widely believed that the act of building a town attracted rain. The 'atmosphere' of human buildings in an area would naturally attract and collect rain from the heavens. Many of the original methods used to estimate water, rainfall, and other essentials for human survival were wrong.

Most of them are catalogued in the outstanding Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner - an excellent book with an outstanding audiobook too.

https://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-American-Disappearing...