BEIJING, March 30 (UPI) -- In an attempt to bring relief to drought-stricken southwestern China, the government fired cannons and launched rockets loaded with cloud-seeding chemicals throughout the weekend.
Results ranged from drizzle to moderate rain to downpours in 11 cities and prefectures, yet meteorologists said the induced rain would have a limited effect on China's worst drought in a century.
In the Chuxiong Yi autonomous prefecture of Yunnan, the scant rain wasn't enough to produce a flow of surface and ground water and had no effect on the water supply in wells or reservoirs. So the drinking water shortage will continue, a chief weather forecaster told China Daily.
China's drought has affected 61.3 million people and more than 12 million acres of crops in the provinces of Guizhou, Yunnan, Sichuan, Chongqing, and Guangxi, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said last week.
Zhang Peiqun, a meteorologist at China's National Climate Center, attributed China's lack of rain to "anomalous atmospheric circulation" and "complicated ocean currents," state-run news agency Xinhua reports.
In Yunnan province, hit hardest by the drought, the flood control and drought relief agency said Tuesday that 8.3 million people lack drinking water. That's an increase of about 100,000 from last week.
More than 80 percent of Yunnan's crop areas have adversely been affected by the drought and 8.2 million residents are experiencing food shortages. Agricultural economic losses in the province are estimated at $2.5 billion.
To offset these losses, up to 2 million people in Yunnan are expected to migrate for work this year, up from 1.2 million last year, said Bai Enpei, secretary of the provincial committee of the Communist Party of China, Xinhua reports.
A farmer in Zhangyi county in Yunnan told China Daily how he hasn't seen a drop of rain since last summer. The drought has wiped out the wheat he planted last summer and threatens the spring cultivating season.
"We only had 237 million cubic feet of water, or less than half we had in the previous year, stored this year for the Qujing irrigation area, the largest of its kind in Yunnan, due to the drought," Wang Ziyun, head of Qujing's water bureau told China Daily.
"With the supply ration, the reservoir can only supply water for 48 days from now on. Without rainfall in May, the season for the water we had will run out of use for transplanting rice seedlings in the irrigation zone," he said.
The outlook in Guizhou province is no less promising, with nearly 70 percent of its 18,000 reservoirs essentially dried up.
