China Makes Artificial Rain for Beijing

This might seem at first glance to be just a simple story, but if you take a moment to think about it further, it raises some very interesting questions….things like
1) Are rain and the water it produces a finite resource?
2) Does creating artificial rain in one place affect rainfall in another place?
3) In a military sense, could this be used to disrupt traffic, create mudslides, breech dams and dikes, and create chaos?
4) Is the US doing this? Where are the tests? Are we being told about it?
5) Is this why my laundry got wet while it was hanging on the line?
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BEIJING – Chinese weather specialists used chemicals to engineer Beijing’s heaviest rainfall of the year, helping to relieve drought and rinse dust from China’s capital, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Friday.
Technicians with the Beijing Weather Modification Office fired seven rocket shells containing 163 cigarette-size sticks of silver iodide over the city’s skies on Thursday, Xinhua said.
The reaction that occurred brought as much as four-tenths of an inch of rain, the heaviest rainfall this year, helping to “alleviate drought, add soil moisture and remove dust from the air for better air quality,” Xinhua said.
Though unusual in many parts of the world, China has been tinkering with artificial rainmaking for decades, using it frequently in the drought-plagued north. Last month, another artificial rainfall was generated to clear Beijing after the city suffered some of the fiercest dust storms this decade