China Plans to Control the Weather During 2008 Olympics

Blue skies will dominate the 2008 Olympics held in China.  At least that's what Beijing's Weather Modification Office hopes to accomplish during the historically wet month of August.  Recently the office held a practice run for the summer games by attempting to blast ominous clouds out of the sky with rockets carrying a payload of silver iodine and dry ice. 

It is claimed that "seeding" clouds with this chemical combination can induce rainfall, dissipate clouds, and bring on the sunshine.  Some Texans tried cloud seeding a few years ago in hopes of bringing rain to the drought-stricken Edwards Aquifer, which serves as the main water supply to residents of San Antonio.     

Skeptical? Attempting to modify the weather is nothing new. Matthew Moore, producer of our Weather Extremes weather special, asked us if cloud seeding could work on hurricanes, and the answer is that it has already been tried. 

In the 1960s, the US government attempted to weaken hurricanes through a weather modification program dubbed Project STORMFURY.  Results were inconclusive, and in the 1970s, the program shifted its resources from cloud seeding experiments to researching the structure of hurricanes.

Lately people have jokingly asked us if we could make it stop raining, but what if we really could control our daily weather?  What would you do if you had this awesome power?

Comments

[Trey]

I think if you can control the weather that would be great. But that would not be a smart thing to do. All things happen for a reason.

[Natalie]

I forgot to put this in the other comment, but are ya'll going to replay Weather Extremes?! That was really interesting.

[Paul]

All you need is unlimted power. and a way to pull or push it into the atmosphere. :)

[Natalie]

Oh wow! Thats cool! Controlling the weather would be amazing but pretty difficult at times I guess. That'd be cool if ya'll controlled it, then Eyewittness Weather would be EVEN COOLER!