Word: weathered
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Almost a week after a Minneapolis bridge unexpectedly collapsed, National Transportation Safety Board investigators are struggling to determine the catastrophe's cause. They are considering factors such as wear and tear, weather, or the weight of a construction project taking place at the time that closed half of the bridge's eight lanes. But within the next decade, engineers hope to have technology in place that will allow the bridges themselves to notify officials when something is out of whack, giving governments the opportunity to fix problems before a disaster occurs...
...little rain," said Hennepin County Sheriff Rich Stanek at a briefing, "What we can't stand is lightning." He said, however, that wind may be an additional problem because the remains of the bridge remain unstable. There were also "power line issues" upriver. Recovery efforts continued despite the weather and the poor visibility...
...luck could end for Toowoomba and the rest of southeast Queensland. Last month a group of scientists in the area got one step closer to launching what could be the world's most advanced experiment in rainmaking - or, as it's known in weather circles, cloud seeding. That's the practice of injecting clouds, usually with silver iodide "seeds," salt or dry ice, to make the clouds' water or ice particles bigger and yield more rain. The technique has been used in different parts of the world for more than 60 years - with varying success. But the slow ramp...
...Queensland project, says Roelof Bruintjes, a cloud-seeding expert with the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research, is that, for the first time, scientists will be able to take full advantage of a simple premise: some clouds are better for seeding than others. Up to now, the right weather-measuring tools have never been in the right program at the right time. Starting in November, they will be. A project staff of about 30 will use a recently installed CP2 Doppler radar to analyze what's happening in Queensland's clouds before, during and after materials like silver iodide...
...Toowoomba Mayor Thorley sees it the same way. Like the state, her town has explored several options to get more water to people, from tapping into natural underground aquifers to pumping water some 700 m up the mountainside. "If we're seeing such weird weather - if we're going to have to pump water all over Australia via huge pipelines - wouldn't it be wiser to find another way?" says Thorley. "It would be worth...