Great Wall
© APTourists get a cool view of the Great Wall
Beijing - China's normally dry capital lay covered in a white blanket for a third day yesterday, with Beijing residents and tourists basking in an unusual, artificially produced snowfall.

The snow was a product of cloud-seeding, a method used by the Government to induce rain to try to end a three-month drought that has gripped at least 12 Chinese provinces.

Zhang Qiang, deputy director of the Beijing Weather Modification Command Centre, said it had blasted chemicals into the clouds to increase the snow. "More than 500 cigarette-size sticks of silver iodide were seeded into clouds from 28 weather rocket-launch bases in the city," Zhang told the Xinhua News Agency.

Though traffic was slower than normal, no roads were closed as the city mobilised more than 7500 sanitation workers and 2211 vehicles to remove ice and snow from the capital's streets.

Source: Associated Press