The way the wind blows

90% of the time, I'd guess, the wind here blows straight in out of the west, or a little bit north of west.

But, for most of the last week or so, it's been coming from the south. Yesterday, according to Weather Underground, it was actually blowing from the south-east. Pretty freaky.

This is, apparently, what has principally been screwing up the government's Olympic weather-control plans. The provinces to the south are less arid and dust-bowly than the ones to the west, so their air brings us super-humidity. Also, I'm guessing, the factory closures have been less extensive (or, initially, non-existent) in that quadrant; so, the air is not only damp, but smoggy.

And the air has nowhere to go, since the northern third of Beijing is ringed by hills: it just gets trapped in a bowl, and sits here for days on end. We need the stronger, fresher winds from the west to clear things up.

Furthermore, most of the cloud-seeding batteries are stationed out west; so, perhaps we have been missing some opportunities to shoot down some rain during this last week. You'd think, wouldn't you, that some of these units at least would be fairly mobile, easily repositioned as necessary, but it seems not. Heck, I don't see why they can't shoot the small-ish rockets they use for most of it off the back of a moving truck, but...... Well, perhaps, with Olympic security being the way it is, even an army truck can't drive around the 5th Ringroad bristling with rocketry without getting stopped at numerous checkpoints.

Today is - yet again - pretty much windless, but what there is is more out of the north. And something seems to have happened, because for the first time in 8 days the day has dawned bright and clear.

Despite all of the government's efforts to manipulate the weather, we are still essentially at the mercy of Mother Nature. Let's hope She's a little kinder to us over the next two weeks.