Cloud control Written by 7DAYS | Tuesday, 10 May 2005 For a heart-stopping hour it looked yesterday as if President Vladimir Putin would fail to deliver on a promise to provide fine weather for world leaders attending Victory Day celebrations. Russia's Defence Ministry put its honour on the line last week when it stated flatly that Russian planes would repel any hostile clouds that could mar a Red Square parade attended by US President George W Bush and other world leaders. Russian news agencies said the air force had sent up 11 planes to seed the clouds with chemical dispersal agents, a procedure refined over decades of grand state occasions and used to guarantee a sunny Olympic games in 1980. But as the 10 am time for the military parade approached, with organisers nervously consulting their watches, black clouds thickened over Red Square and rain grew heavier. Putin greeted a string of arriving dignitaries huddled under umbrellas. All that, however, changed as Bush and his wife Laura walked the 50 metres from the Kremlin gates to the Red Square tribune to take up their seat alongside Putin. The rain died away, the clouds cleared, the sun came out and Russian organisers were home ... and dry. Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov said the dispersal operation had cleared the skies bang on the planned time of 9.45am. "If the air force had carried out the operation much earlier, then almost certainly thunder showers would have fallen during the parade," Ivanov said. He added that seeding of clouds had forced the rain clouds to empty their contents up to 50 km from the city centre. Russian authorities say use of such chemical agents in cloud dispersal does not harm the environment. Russians take “cloud-bursting” for granted, having enjoyed its benefits over public holidays since Stalin gave the order to research weather control in the 1930s. Over decades, the observatory in St Petersburg has developed techniques to dispel clouds, divert hailstorms from harvests, arrest avalanches, disperse fogs from airports and bring rain to drought-afflicted regions. The most reliable form of rain prevention is to induce the clouds to rain before they float over the area under protection. The pilots on board the cloud-bursters are directed towards rainclouds by meteorologists on the ground. On the orders of geophysicists on board the aircraft, dry ice will be dispensed into the clouds from a mile away. The dry ice is fired in special pyrotechnic capsules that combust once empty. Once injected with dry ice, rain crystalises within the cloud and falls ten or 15 minutes later. Specially equipped jets will be on hand throughout the festivities and the talks that follow. Approximately one kilogramme of dry ice is used for every square kilometre of rain cloud. Rainclouds were burst yesterday at a safe distance of 30 miles (50km) outside the city. Russia’s first private weather controlling agency, the Atmosphere Technologies Agency, took part in the delicate operation. It was hoping for rainclouds. “No rainclouds equals no pay,” Viktor Petrov, the deputy director, said. Russia used the rain bursting technique to ensure the 1980 Moscow Olympics were rain free, and in 2003, when the city of St Petersburg celebrated its 300th aniversary in a weekl-long party, the jets were on hand to keep a range of international guests dry. http://www.7days.ae/content/view/652/6/
Nice. Maybe one day we will be able to control the weather I saw a bit of the red square parade - really really nice. Wonder if StyleWarz was in it?
WHY?? do we always want to take the fun out of living, what are we becoming - WIMPS!! LOL! You can have your glass bubbles, I am stayin outside!
