Word: winded
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Pilots know that weather causes about 40% of aircraft accidents and about 65% of air-traffic delays longer than 15 minutes. Thankfully, technology can defuse the threat. Doppler radar can predict and pinpoint rapid, dramatic shifts in wind by bouncing beacons off different air masses...
Today most people think that Doppler radar wind-shear-detection systems have been installed in every airport. In fact, only 16 are installed and working. Some $350 million worth of parts for Doppler wind-shear-warning radar (promised after a horrible 1985 crash in Dallas) moldered away when truckloads of equipment went to dusty warehouses instead of to the airports most in need. Other systems are installed but haven't been switched on. Seven of the remaining 47 scheduled for production haven't even been delivered...
...years since the Dallas crash, other wind-shear accidents have cost passenger lives. Two unsolved crashes in Pennsylvania and North Carolina have been tentatively attributed to wind shear that might have been avoided with Doppler radar. After a USAir flight crashed in Charlotte, North Carolina, in July 1994, the NTSB said the delay in installing the radar had cost the lives of 37 onboard. Charlotte was supposed to get the radar system in early 1993. As an airport in the South (where wind shear is particularly common), it was No. 5 on the FAA list. But the inevitable delays...
...unknown will be to what extent weather helps. When the wind blows strong out of the north, Beijing's skies can clear quickly. But when there is no breeze, the city's northern and western hills can easily trap pollution. Last August a four-day car-restriction test resulted in only modest improvements, which the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau blamed on the lack of a breeze. But unlike the 2006 and 2007 tests, which ran for just three and four days, respectively, this year's limitations will have been in place for nearly three weeks when the Olympics kick...
...process shot even when it isn't; the two planes don't blend to form a plausible movie reality. The process works niftily, though, in a scene where Sean must get across a bottomless chasm by climbing from one suspended stepping stone to the next. Sometimes a gust of wind blows a stone upside down, and he must hang on, as shards of the rock break off and fall into the camera. If, at this moment, the child next to you grabs your arm and hollers "Duck!", the movie will have been worth the ticket price...