China's office of weather modification is gearing up to keep the sky clear during the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. How will they do it? With planes, rockets and artillery.

The weather will be closely monitored with aerial surveillance and radar, and the reconnaissance will all be processed by an IBM p575 supercomputer. The computer will be responsible for keeping track of roughly 17,000 square miles around the stadium. Any invading clouds will come under fire from a pair of aircraft and twenty artillery and rocket positions, all using ammunition designed to spray silver iodide and dry ice. This will cause the clouds to lose their lunch and downpour somewhere that isn't over the games. If the attack fails and a cloud does make it through, it'll then be bombarded with chemicals that'll shrink the droplet size so the cloud won't be able to disgorge itself until it passes the stadium.

Somewhere, the guy who thought it'd be brilliant to print up 2008 Beijing Olympic Games umbrellas is having a downpour of his own.

Technology Review, via Sparking Tech