In Chile's Atacama Desert, people once laughed at those collecting water from clouds. "They called them the crazy cloud people," Orlando Rojas Figueroa said, remembering how neighbors reacted when he and a group of friends started experimenting with fog harvesting in the 1990s. "People would say, 'What are these guys going to do with the clouds?'" But in one of the driest places on Earth, their strange idea is quietly helping communities survive.
The Atacama sits along Chile's northern Pacific coast. Some areas there receive rain only a few times per century. Others have never recorded any rainfall at all. Yet every night, cold ocean air sweeps inland, turning into thick fog that settles against the desert floor. The fog is packed with thousands of liters of water droplets, carried by the wind and just waiting to be caught.
"Clouds are made up of water droplets," explained Camilo del Río, director of the Atacama Desert Center at the Catholic University of Chile. "They're already formed, they're already condensed. Whenever a cloud is transported by wind and comes into contact with the Earth's surface, what is touching the surface is thousands and thousands of liters of water."
Fog harvesting began in Chile decades ago. In 1987, the fishing community of Chungungo installed 100 large mesh collectors, each one about the size of a small apartment (12 meters long by 4 meters tall). The mesh trapped water droplets as fog blew through, and the droplets dripped into containers below. Those 100 collectors supplied roughly 33 liters of clean drinking water every day to about 300 residents.
Today, Rojas leads the Atacama Fog Catchers Group. He says their collectors can now gather thousands of liters per day when conditions are right. They place the mesh structures on hilltops, where fog collects most thickly. The group uses the water both for drinking and for growing fruits and vegetables in the desert's harsh climate.
Researchers are studying how to make fog harvesting even more effective. They track factors like wind speed, temperature, and solar radiation to find the best spots and times to collect water. The goal is to show local governments that fog harvesting could become a reliable part of Chile's water management strategy.
Fog catchers may have started as a Chilean invention, but the need for them is growing worldwide. As droughts intensify and groundwater depletes, more communities are looking skyward for answers. In the Atacama, what once seemed absurd is now quietly proving that water can come from the most unlikely places.