The skies turned black and without warning the heavens opened. Lunchtime in Beijing and is seemed as if the world was going to end.
"I really thought this was it. It was very frightening. Motorists had to put their car lights on because it turned so dark," Mr Xiao Wei, a stallholder in the Silk Market.
However, the mystery of the sudden and unseasonal weekend torrential rain in the Chinese capital was solved yesterday. The Beijing Meteorological Administration confirmed to The Irish Times that it was government rainmakers, and not the hand of God, that brought on the heavy downpour.
A spokesman said that shells to induce rain were launched last Wednesday, Thursday and Friday into the skies in several areas in north China which have been suffering their worst drought in decades and where water rationing has been imposed. An estimated 15 million people are affected.
The Tianjin Office of Artificial Weather Inducement said the shells used to bring on rain contained silver iodide, which serves as a catalyst to make rain. However, the cloud-seeding process, as it is known, has not been totally successful, and has resulted in only a fraction of the rainfall required to offset the ill-effects of the drought.
The Beijing meteorologists explained there are two methods used to cloud-seed. The other is to spread dry ice, salt, or chemicals by airplane.
"No matter what method we use the purpose is to add the coagulum in the air so that the moisture can stick on the coagulum and then be transformed into rain," the spokesman said.
The cloud-seeding can only be applied when there is cloud which contains water or moisture, he added. The cloud-seeding work last week was designed to increase the rainfall that was forecast rather than to make rain itself.
Meanwhile, China has promised to step up its decade-old drive to halt desertification. More than a quarter of China's territory is now desert, and this is increasing by 950 square miles a year. Desertification is estimated to cost the economy $6.5 billion a year.