I forgot about that

Maybe the communications system was damanged so they never got the chance to fire. The Ghoul working on it was after all trying to fix it.

More than likely they hadn't completed what they needed to to use, or hadn't gotten to it in time.

Typically nuclear test towns don't have anyone in there except for dummies so I can't see it being much different. There most likely at one point a town called Hopeville to test what a nuclear bomb would do to a small town if it got hit directly.

Well I doubt it, the Big mountain scientists didn't exactly like helping people, judging from what Dr. Mobius said if the other scientists got access to the Mojave or the rest of the wasteland, they would continue their tests and experiments on towns maybe like what happened to Hopeville. So I doubt they gave them something in exchange to let them experiment there unless the citizens thought it would have just been like normal weather they were getting. As for nukes, no clue!

Remember mr. House deactivated several nuclear war heads during the great war these are most likely the same ones

I think maybe that the town was offered a meterelogical experiment to increase rain, but either it went wrong and (or intentionally) started producing storms instead of rain.

Maybe the citizens were promised rain and water and got experimental storms