Blue Skies!

Today the skies were Carolina blue, just like a typical Chapel Hill day. It was really hot, but it didn't matter because the air felt fresh and unpolluted. I heard that last summer, the sky was like this everyday. However, because of the Olympics, the government has been sending rain clouds up in the sky to induce rain and is guaranteeing blue skies every day of the Olympics. See the May issue of National Geographic on China for more explanation and a picture of this cloud shooter machine. Basically, they are controlling the weather. What is this doing to the environment? I also now know why everyday around 6:00 p.m., it starts raining. Haha. Well maybe that's not the real reason, but I bet it has to do something with it. Wouldn't it be interesting to be a Chinese meteorologist right now!

I have a polluted and blue skies picture of the same square to compare. Just to preface the pictures, they are taken around the same time of day. On the left is the polluted one. It didn't rain much on this day and there is basically just a haze of pollution. The right one is the clear skies one. You can see that the air is much cleaner and it was so much easier to breathe! The sky is blue instead of grey (which isn't fully clear from these pictures), but you can actually see the sun shining and the building and square is much clearer (even though it was taken from farther away).