A rain experiment conducted by Chinese officials unexpectedly cooked up a snowstorm this month whereby the resulting snowfall prompted flight delays and traffic problems all over Beijing.

The experiment itself was a concerted effort to dispel drought conditions that have prevailed in Northern China for more than 10 years.

Thus, that’s the reason why officials from the Beijing Weather Modification Office found themselves seeding clouds with chemicals.

‘We won’t miss any opportunity of artificial precipitation since Beijing is suffering from the lingering drought,’ was the words of Zhang Qiang, head of the office.

They might have being planning for rain but ended up with heavy snowfalls that brought most of Beijing to a standstill. Furthermore, folks were also faced with freezing temperatures of 29 Fahrenheit as well as strong winds.

Following the second snowstorm, officials are now stating that the storms were not man-made events.

Meanwhile, experts are now fretting about the after-effects of tampering with the weather.

For instance, Zhao Nan, a Beijing-based engineer, is horrified at the vast amounts of chloride used to melt snow from urban street after the storm. He notes that this amount, amounting to more than 5500 tonnes, could easily damage a building’s steel structures.

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By shinigami on 14-11-2009