MOSCOW MAYOR PROMISES NO SNOW THIS WINTER

Written by: Brian Neudorff

Could you imagine Mayor Bob Duffy, or Monroe County Executive Maggie Brooks promising a Rochester winter with out snow? You'd probably think they lost their minds, but that is what the mayor of Moscow Russia is promising this winter. In an article published on Time.com, the mayor of Moscow, Yury Luzhkov, is promising to keep the snow away from the city by using the Russian Air Force to seed clouds before they reach the city. City officials hope that by seeding these clouds with cement powder, dry ice or silver iodide most of the snow will fall outside of the city.

Apparently, weather modification has been used before in Moscow out ahead of the 2 major holidays of Victory Day in May and City Day in September in order to keep skies clear and the rain from falling on their parades. So how will this work? The city will pay the air force to seed the clouds from November 15th to March 15th to prevent "very big and serious snow" from falling on the city. This promise isn't for all snow but for the large snows and blizzards that can occur during the winter. It appears they expect some snow to make it into the city but if all goes as plan they won't have large crippling snow storms. The estimated cost to use weather modification is estimated to be half of what the city of Moscow has budgeted for snow removal each year.

Personally, I don't know how I feel about this. I am not a big fan of weather modification because I don't think weather is something humans can control or should even mess with. It will be interesting to see if the Moscow Mayor can come through on his promise and if he succeeds will other cities across the world try to do the same thing? What do you think?