The Olympic stadium in Beijing, China, will be dry during the opening ceremony, officials said, but not because the structure has a roof (it doesn’t). Instead, Chinese meteorologists claim they can stop rain from falling over the stadium, despite the fact that the games will take place during the monsoon season this August. The process of stopping rain from falling is similar to cloud-seeding procedures that meteorologists around the world have used to try to prompt rain to fall. Stopping the rain involves shooting liquid nitrogen and silver iodide into clouds to force water droplets to shrink in size and, if all goes well, keep the rain in the clouds. “If you’re talking about a small rainfall, you can eliminate it,” said weather modifier Wang Guohe of the Chinese Academy of Meteorology. “But if it’s going to be raining cats and dogs, there’s nothing [people] can do about it.” Just try not to step in any poodles!
