Jeff Ruffalo, a public relations adviser to the Beijing Olympics, believes this is a first for the summer Olympics, which in recent years have taken place in drier cities. Summer is the rainy season in Asia. Originally, the Beijing Olympics were to open July 25, but meteorologists urged that the date be pushed back as late as possible while keeping in mind these are summer games. Still, the chances of rain in Beijing on August 8 are close to 50 per cent.

Training with the Olympics in mind, the meteorologists have been practicing their “rain mitigation” techniques since 2006. They have had a couple of dry runs, so to speak—a China-Africa summit and a Panda festival in Sichuan province, among others. The Chinese have been tinkering with the weather since the late 1950s, trying to bring rains to the desert terrain of the northern provinces.

The bureau of weather modification was established in the 1980s and is believed to be the largest in the world. It has a reserve army of 37,000 people—most of them, in effect, weekend warriors who are called to duty during unusual droughts. Like its own branch of the military, it has 30 aircraft, 4,000 rocket launchers and 7,000 anti-aircraft guns, according to Wang Guohe, director of weather modification for the Chinese Academy of Meteorology.

“We have the largest programme in the world with the most people involved and the most equipment, but it is not really the most advanced,” Wang said. That honour belongs to the Russians, who he says used sophisticated cloud-seeding in 1986 to prevent radioactive rain from the Chernobyl reactor accident from reaching Moscow.

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