Johnson's Russia List
#7194
23 May 2003
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A CDI Project
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#17
The Times (UK)
May 23, 2003
Putin orders the clouds not to rain on his parade
From Clem Cecil in Moscow
PRESIDENT PUTIN has ordered fine weather for the St Petersburg summit and
300th anniversary festivities next week, and it is unlikely to rain on his
parade. Ten aeroplanes will take to the skies, equipped with cloud-seeding
agents in an attempt to induce rain away from the city, allowing
holidaymakers and visiting heads of state to enjoy dry weather below.
Celebrations of the anniversary of Russia's historic capital and seat of
imperial government a week today will be attended by hundreds of thousands
of visitors. A weekend of festivities will be attended by President Putin,
President Bush, Tony Blair and the leaders of other EU nations.
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." Such practice may strike awe into the heart of every
rain-soaked Brit, but 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 will be 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 fifteen minutes
later.
Approximately one kilogram of dry ice is used for every square kilometre of
rain cloud. Rainclouds will be burst at a safe distance of 30 miles (50km)
outside the city, where locals, used to sudden rain on fine days, will have
their umbrellas ready. But thunderclouds are feared because pilots are by
law forbidden to fly within more than seven miles of them, making it
impossible to seed them with raininducing agents. The aircraft will patrol
the skies until the end of the summit on May 31.
Russia's first private weather controlling agency, the Atmosphere
Technologies Agency, will be taking part in the delicate operation. It is
hoping for rainclouds. "No rainclouds equals no pay," Viktor Petrov, the
deputy director, said.
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