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Olympic officials guarantee no rain for opening ceremonies
Dave Stubbs , Canwest News Service
Published: Sunday, August 03, 2008
"BEIJING - It's four days before the official start of the Games of the XXIX Olympiad and a first glance upon arrival in this remarkable land has revealed that the Chinese have pretty much everything under control.
Or, controlled."
"The Chinese have 26 weather control stations woven into a web that will defend Beijing's National Olympic Stadium, aka the Bird's Nest, from precipitation from 8:08 p.m., local time Friday, when the ceremony begins, until its end roughly three and a half hours later"
"They'll achieve this, they say, with light aircraft, rockets and shells, silver iodide crystals - dry ice - or calcium-chloride salts fired into clouds 50 kilometres upwind from the stadium. The goal - no, the guarantee - is to make it rain before the sky wants to."
The country now spends upwards of $90 million a year on this work, using 7,000 artillery guns and 4,000 rocket launchers to seed clouds in rainmaking efforts."