Heavy gusts of winds swept through a central Chinese city, sending people’s laundry flying, after authorities artificially stimulated rainfall to break a severe heatwave.
dubbed the "9/2 Chongqing underwear crisis", prompted speculation that cloud seeding was responsible for the scattering of laundry left out to dry in highrise apartments.
In an attempt to break the heat, local authorities are reported to have stimulated artificial rain, a technique known as cloud seeding. Cloud seeding involves dispersing chemicals like silver iodide into clouds to trigger rainfall. In China, the authorities have admitted they used cloud seeding to generate rainfall, but maintain that it did not cause the subsequent strong winds. Nearly 200 cloud-seeding rockets were fired, resulting in rain.
Residents remained sceptical, sharing their experiences on social media. "I just went out and it suddenly started to rain heavily and underwear fell from the sky,” a resident named Ethele said on Weibo.
First developed in the 1940s, cloud seeding has been utilised in over 50 nations worldwide, including China, the US, Australia, Thailand, and Russia, though its possible side effects remain poorly studied.
In a separate development, China’s Meteorological Administration conducted a cloud structure detection experiment in Xinjiang’s Bayanbulak area from 29 August to 3 September, utilising a big drone to enhance cloud-seeding capacity and improve ecological conditions, Xinhua reported. The drone, with a 20.2m wingspan, can fly for up to 40 hours and cover 8,000km.
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