Haunted by drought, Guangdong Province plans to create more artificial rain in the next few days. 

A cold front from northern China has pushed temperatures down 15 degrees centigrade in some cases and brought with it what is expected to be light to moderate rainfall in the next two days, said Yu Yong, director of the Guangdong Provincial Observatory.
   
Although the rainfall will be far from enough to ease Guangdong's severe drought, it may provide a good opportunity to create artificial rain in the following days, said Yu.
   
Many rockets that will be used to seed clouds have been deployed in Shaoguan, Qingyuan, Meizhou, Shantou, Chaozhou and other cities hard hit by the drought, reported China Daily on Tuesday.
   
Last week, the cities of Shaoguan and Meizhou in northern and eastern parts of Guangdong launched rockets to seed clouds.
   
In the last few months, Guangdong has invested more than 8 million yuan (US$960,000) to study and develop equipment and technology to create rain.
   
Affected by the cold front, low temperatures reached 17 C in Guangzhou yesterday, compared with over 30 C on Sunday.
   
The drizzle and cold weather are expected to last for more than a week.
   
According to Li Ronggen, vice-governor of Guandong Province, the province has invested more than 140 million yuan (US$17 million) to fight the drought.
  
The drought has affected more than 2 million people and 1 million animals in 84 cities and counties in the province.
   
About 1.2 million people have been forced to cope with an insufficient water supply.
   
More than 2.24 million Guangdong residents have joined hands to fight the drought in the past months.
   
Guangdong has shut down more than 200 small and medium-sized hydropower stations to ensure agricultural irrigation.
   
More than 680,000 hectares of farmland in the entire province have been seriously affected. Some 160,000 hectares of farmland have seen total crop failure.
   
Water supplied to neighboring Hong Kong has not been affected by the severe drought.
   
Guangdong has provided more than 290 million tons of quality drinking water to Hong Kong between July and October.

(China Daily November 16, 2004))