In a previous post I wrote Beijing was planing to artificially change the weather for the Olympics if they needed to. Good news, I suppose, they won’t have to. How do you say “whew!” in Chinese, I wonder? The forecast will be overcast (smog?) but no rain is expected according to the China Meterological Administration. A shower in the afternoon and temps from 25-30C (78-86F).

Some 100,000 people, athletes and fans, are expected to be in the National Stadium (Bird’s Nest) on Friday for the opening ceremony. Moderate rain is expected over the weekend. Won’t matter, I suppose, early events in the Olympics are indoors - swimming, basketball and such.

Weather forecasts will be broadcast every hour, 24 hours in advance. Four satellites will check out the clouds every 15 minutes, and 186 weather stations will gather data every 5 minutes. There are also seven fixed Doppler radar stations and two mobile stations. All this to tell us it’s going to rain, or not, be hot or not. And, then what?

Can you say overkill?

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Beijing is pulling out all the stops in order to have clear weather for the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics Games. The government says that if bad weather threatens then meteorologists will be asked to step in and change the weather.  Whoa! It almost makes me wish for rain, or thunderstorms and heavy winds and such just to see if the climateers can pull it off.

China’s vice director with the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) says the meteorologists have been practicing to make artificial weather modifications for the past 5 years, especially on reducing rainfall. 

“Artificial weather modification could be useful when a drizzle occurs,” he said. “But in case of a heavy rainfall, no one can help.”

Official forecasts for the opening games are due out on August 1st, a week before they kick off. According to city weather statistics, there’s a 47% chance of drizzle on August 8th. That sounds about right for most anywhere. Maybe it’ll rain, maybe it won’t.

So, how would they stop the drizzle anyway? Giant umbrella?

The guys in this house of umbrellas won’t mind for sure.

Something tells me that people ought not be messing with the weather. But, then China has definitely been doing their part to mess things up.