Headwinds, Dancing and Other "Nonsense"

At our first duty station, my husband and I were both age twenty one for most of our time there, I was pregnant for half the time we were there and we had little money.

We frequently went for a short walk together in the evening and talked. There was a very dark side road with no street lights next to our apartment complex and it led to the main road. 

As you approached the main road, there was a convenience store and it had lights, including an isolated street light behind it. The ball of light in the darkness was always swarming with flying insects, like a living soup above our heads.

Over time, I realized something else was there, something I had trouble making out in the dark. I think my husband explained it was black bats swooping down and feeding on the swarm of bugs.

Large birds are known to frequently travel on the strong headwinds of storms, in part because those headwinds have adequate lift.

Another reason birds ride the headwinds is because the winds herd insects. Even if insects aren't part of their diet, the things that feed upon insects may well be something the larger birds would gladly eat.

It's a little like how whales use bubble net feeding and other techniques to herd small fish, krill or shrimp into being a thick enough soup to get adequately fed. It's a means to efficiently get an adequate amount of food for a creature with high caloric and nutritional needs.

Supposedly there were rituals to try to call Thunderbirds and these were closely associated with trying to summon rain. Unfortunately, most attempts to search for pertinent information gets me things like how to summon storms in Minecraft. 

But I either heard of or read an online discussion of a rain summoning ritual where someone began to explain the science behind how to use smoke etc. to foster cloud formation and encourage it to rain. So I don't think this is just superstitious nonsense. 

Some of the most prevalent (rain) rituals include:

Chanting or singing prayers to invoke the rain gods

Dancing in rhythmic patterns to mimic the movement of rain clouds

Making offerings of food, flowers, or other symbolic items to appease the spirits of the weather

Lighting candles or bonfires to create a sacred space for the ritual

Using special tools, such as drums or rattles, to enhance the energy of the ceremony

Loud chanting by many people, foot stomping by many people and drums or rattles would all create vibrations disturbing the atmosphere which might actually impact atmospheric activity, such as cloud formation and precipitation. 

The foot stomping dancing might also put dust in the air that could serve as cloud condensation nuclei.

As the air cools, water vapor condenses into tiny liquid water droplets. This process requires a surface, provided by microscopic particles known as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN). 

The quote above and the one below are from a sciency piece about how smoke impacts cloud formation (linked in the quote below).

While smoke particles can increase the number of cloud droplets, their effect on actual rainfall is complex and often leads to suppression rather than enhancement. Clouds affected by smoke can contain five times more water droplets than clean clouds, but these droplets are significantly smaller. These numerous, tiny droplets are less likely to collide and grow large enough to fall as rain. This can reduce overall rainfall, as observed in studies of wildfire smoke. In certain high-altitude or unstable atmospheric conditions, however, a high concentration of smoke particles might lead to more intense, localized storms, including hail, by delaying precipitation and allowing more water to be carried higher.

NASA study untangles smoke, pollution effects on clouds 

TLDR: The right kind and amount of "pollution" can foster cloud growth.

Impacts of wildfire smoke aerosols on radiation, clouds, precipitation, climate, and air quality 

This is just an abstract and a guy with a PhD told me "Don't read abstracts. They frequently don't really summarize the study accurately. Get the actual study or ignore it." I'm including it in case anyone actually reads my post and wants to find something more scientific than how to summon storms in Minecraft. 

Unveiling the Science: Can Smoke Transform into Clouds?

Smoke is a complex mixture of particles and gases that results from the incomplete combustion of organic material. Its composition varies depending on the source, 

So maybe "ritualistic, magic" ingredients for things like smudging or whatever are important because it impacts the composition of the resulting smoke.