Word: weather
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...disrupting flights in and out of Beijing and hampering shipping off the Chinese coast. Still, expect few complaints from the generally dry region; it's the most accumulation the city's seen in a decade, and further proof the Chinese may be becoming the world's best at managing weather. In a 2008 experiment, scientists seeded clouds in advance of the Beijing Olympics, successfully ensuring clear skies for the opening ceremony...
...Everybody complains about the weather," the old saying goes, "But nobody does anything about it." That is, until now. A Nov. 1 snowfall in Beijing - the city's earliest since 1987 - is due, Chinese scientists say, to a campaign of "cloud-seeding" to encourage precipitation. If true, it's the wettest success yet in a long-standing effort to bring moisture artificially to the parched northern regions of China. So how'd they do it? (See pictures of the science of snowflakes...
...those who haven't had a meteorology class since middle school, a quick review of Weather 101: Colder air encourages precipitation, so when the temperature drops at high altitude, water naturally condenses out of the air. Clouds are formed when this moisture, suspended in tiny droplets or crystals, meets a condensation nuclei - small particles of dust or ice that are blown about the upper atmosphere. Without these small particles, clouds can't form...
...Germans had better weaponry, and the weather was on their side: shortly after the landings, the Channel was scoured by its worst storm in 40 years, which slowed the Allied buildup. The terrain was also on their side: the towering Norman hedgerows, part of a topographical oddity known as the bocage, were so tall and thick, they could and literally did stop Sherman tanks. (Watch TIME's video "The Iconic Photo...
...future manager, publisher and husband - asks why she wants to fly. When he first proposes marriage, she demurs, telling him, "I want to be free, George, to be a vagabond of the air." To a bleary-eyed pilot who questions her decision to take to the skies in dicey weather, she says, "I'm as serious as you are hungover." Earhart may well have said all these things, but you wish the filmmakers had been bold enough to let their heroine sound like a real person now and again. Surely on one of those long flights, Earhart whined at least...