“I Will Send Forth Hail Among Them”

Sorenson discusses this prophecy of Abinadi:

“The prophet Abinadi warned Noah and his priests on the Lord’s behalf: ”It shall come to pass that I will send forth hail among them, and it shall smite them; and they shall also be smitten with the east wind; and insects shall pester their land also, and devour their grain. And they shall be smitten with a great pestilence—and all this will I do because of their iniquities and abominations" (Mosiah 12:6-7). No scriptural record tells of the fulfillment of this prophecy, but the threat turns out to be a valid one on the Guatemalan scene where it seems to have been uttered. The conditions foretold are phrased in such a way as to indicate they were within the realm of nature’s recognized potential, yet they were so rare that the listeners normally did not contemplate such a combination of calamities as a serious possibility. Highland Guatemala does occasionally suffer just those prophesied conditions under unusual circumstances. Abinadi‘s point was that God would cause these rare phenomena to come about jointly as unusual punishment for the Zeniffites’ gross wickedness.

Geographer F. W. McBryde explains that certain meteorological situations produce an extremely drying north or northeast wind. (Recall that the “east” among pre-Columbian peoples in highland Guatemala coincided with what on our present maps is north or northeast.) These freak “norte” winds hold back the moist air from the Pacific side that normally flows into the highland valleys daily. As a result, the normal pattern of life-giving showers is upset. Fire danger heightens under these unusual conditions, with drying gusts reaching as high as 35 miles an hour. Great hailstorms occasionally (March through May) accompany these winds, as the strong surge of dry air converges along the coast with moist Pacific air, forming huge hail-generating thunderheads that drift inland above the north (“east”) wind. Thus, a period of “east wind” could cause disastrous weather problems in Guatemala/Nephi, in just the terms the prophet said.

He also warned that insects would come to attack the crops. Migratory locusts periodically caused great destruction to corn fields in the Yucatan Peninsula and highland Guatemala. The dry interior Motagua River valley, only 15 miles “east” from our Nephi, had a climate that particularly favored the pests. The dry “norte” winds could drive the swarms those few miles onto the Zeniffites’ fields. The Annals of the Cakchiquels, one of the traditional histories from the highlands, mentions two locust infestations shortly before the Spanish conquest, and there must have been many more. Food shortages that result from destructive weather and locust infestations are known historically to have brought malnutrition and pestilence in their wake. As Abinadi foretold, the pattern of wind, hail, insects, and famine, which on the surface seems rather arbitrary, turns out to be logically, integrally linked when we have our geography correct. They could happen, and would be devastating, if the Lord chose to trigger them. (Sorenson, John L. An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon. FARMS 1985, p. 183.)