Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton and this is The Weather Notebook.

For years, water had been trucked into the village at a cost of about ten percent of total personal income. That is, until Canadian scientist Robert Schemenauer addressed the problem.

After watching trees collect water from clouds and fogs, Schemenauer realized he could imitate these great natural fog collectors to mine water from fog.

Because fog droplets are so small and drop very slowly, they travel nearly horizontally, even in the lightest breeze. Since they don't fall like rain, they can't be caught in a bucket.

A good fog collector requires large, vertical mesh panels -- to imitate tree branches and leaves -- through which the fog droplets can drift. As they drift through the mesh, some droplets strike the weave, trickle down the panel. The amount collected depends on the collector's surface area, its efficiency, and the wind speed.

While northern coastal Chile is extremely dry -- often going many years without rainfall -- it does experience frequent sea-fogs in the coastal hills, even during the dry season.

In the initial Chungungo setup, fifty large collectors, each covering 48 square metres, produced a daily average of about 11,000 litres of water, 33 litres per day per villager -- significantly more than the average per capita need of 14 litres daily. Approximate price for one such collector, $5,000 to $10,000.

The project's success has lead to similar projects in other countries, including South Africa, the Dominican Republic, Israel, Cape Verde and Canary Islands, and Nepal.

The Weather Notebook is a production of The Mount Washington Observatory and sponsored by Subaru of America and the National Science Foundation.