MOSCOW — The mayor of Moscow, famous for seeding clouds to prevent rain during parades, is escalating his war on weather with plans to slash this year’s snowfall by one-fifth in the Russian capital.Mayor Yuri Luzhkov’s office will marshal the Russian air force and air-defense systems to intercept advancing storm fronts and hit them with dry ice and silver iodine particles, city officials said.
The idea is to reduce the amount of snow that clogs Moscow’s frigid streets and costs the city millions to manage.
Instead, the snow would be dumped on poor villages and satellite towns far from Moscow city limits — which Luzhkov reportedly suggested would help crops in surrounding regions.
The initiative could cost $6 million, but the city hopes to save $10 million in snow removal. City officials declined to comment on details of the plan.
Philip Brown, cloud physics research manager at the British national weather service, suggested the idea is relatively untested, and there has been opposition to the anti-snow plan from environmentalists and officials from the province that rings Moscow.
One political analyst called the plan a populist measure designed to strengthen the eroding political position of Luzkhov, who has been mayor of Russia’s capital since 1992.
Boris Nemtsov, an opposition leader and former regional governor, also denounced Luzhkov’s struggle against the snow.
“He is an old man and does not understand you cannot change a millennia-old climate,” said Nemtsov. “This plan will kill Moscow’s trees. They need snow to survive the winter. Luzhkov is simply dangerous to the people of Moscow.”
SOURCE: USA Today
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