November 22, 2007
On today’s ride over the Yarmalik hills I noticed that a whole bunch of these gizmos have just been installed. I took a close-up picture of the sign for Jess to translate, and it turns out they’re silver iodide generators. Concerned by the lack of winter precipitation over the last couple of years, the authorities are putting these on high ground to try and induce snowfall. This is needed, not only to top up water resources (see post dated Nov 18th), but also because the wheat seeds planted each autumn need a blanket of snow as insulation through Xinjiang’s intense winter cold. It’s an illustration both of how stressed the environment is even here in NW China, and of the measures the CCP are taking to combat this.

On today’s ride over the Yarmalik hills I noticed that a whole bunch of these gizmos have just been installed. I took a close-up picture of the sign for Jess to translate, and it turns out they’re silver iodide generators. Concerned by the lack of winter precipitation over the last couple of years, the authorities are putting these on high ground to try and induce snowfall. This is needed, not only to top up water resources (see post dated Nov 18th), but also because the wheat seeds planted each autumn need a blanket of snow as insulation through Xinjiang’s intense winter cold. It’s an illustration both of how stressed the environment is even here in NW China, and of the measures the CCP are taking to combat this.

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