Control the Rain - Cloud Seeding

Zzzt writes "The Times Online reports that Russian president Putin will assure plesant weather at the Russian St. Petersburg 300th anniversary festival by seeding clouds. They plan to shoot dry ice into the clouds to get the moisture to condense prematurely. 'Vladimir Stepanenko, head physicist of St Petersburg's Geophysics Observatory, said: 'Our aim is to empty all clouds of rain before they hit the city borders.'' There is also brief mention of other fun things Russians do with weather control."

Comments

Vietnam?

[Bob Zer Fish]

I seem to remember someone saying that the Americans attempted to use this ploy against the Vietnamese. The vietnamese, being quite good at irrigiation, just irrgated huge areas of land, and the rain just was diverted elsewhere. Can anyone verify this?

Who ya gonna call? Cloudbusters!

[AtariAmarok]

All the Russians need is one of Wilhelm Reich's cloudbusters to do whatever they want with the clouds! They'd better make sure they dress up like the Sean Connery weather guy from "The Avengers" movie while they use it.

"But everytime it rains

You're here in my head

Like the sun coming out

Ooh, I just know that something good is going to happen" Cloudbusting, by Kate Bush.

Rain-making linked to killer flood

[eddy the lip]

I'm sure advances have been since 1952, but I still think I'd avoid St. Petersburg (or at least the outlying villages). It didn't work out so well for the Brits.

Artificial rain making operations may have caused a storm that nearly wiped out an English village in 1952. New evidence has emerged that the UK's Royal Air Force was carrying out cloud seeding experiments that could in theory have led to the disaster.
New Scientist Article

Nothing new

[gehrehmee]

This sort of technique is used frequently here in Alberta, Canada, to stop hail storms from reaching urban or agricultural areas.