China keeps promise to control weather during the Olympics

DVICE:

“China’s office of weather modification
is gearing up to keep the sky clear during the 2008 Olympic Games in
Beijing. How will they do it? With planes, rockets and artillery.

The weather will be closely monitored with aerial surveillance and
radar, and the reconnaissance will all be processed by an IBM p575
supercomputer. The computer will be responsible for keeping track of
roughly 17,000 square miles around the stadium. Any invading clouds
will come under fire from a pair of aircraft and twenty artillery and
rocket positions, all using ammunition designed to spray silver iodide
and dry ice. This will cause the clouds to lose their lunch and
downpour somewhere that isn’t over the games. If the attack fails and a
cloud does make it through, it’ll then be bombarded with chemicals
that’ll shrink the droplet size so the cloud won’t be able to disgorge
itself until it passes the stadium.

Somewhere, the guy who thought it’d be brilliant to print up 2008
Beijing Olympic Games umbrellas is having a downpour of his own.”

Technology Review, via Sparking Tech