Moscow mayor wants to use Air Force to battle snow

Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov has plans to use the Air Force to blast clouds from the sky this winter to save money on snow removal.

Areas surrounding Moscow are less than happy as they will need to cope with the extra snow. The Moscow Times reports the plan will save the city about 300 million rubles ($10.2 million). Adrei Tsybin, head of City Hall’s department for public works and utilities, said during a press conference Moscow is ready to spend about 180 million rubles to disperse clouds “in the event of very big and serious snowfall.” Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov supports battling clouds by spraying liquid nitrogen, silver, or cement particles into the cloud mass. This forces precipitation to fall before it can reach the capital. In September the Mayor put forward the idea of using the technology to fight the snow drifts that snarl traffic every winter. “What if we force this snow to fall beyond Moscow? The Moscow region will have more water, bigger harvests, while we will have less snow,” he said at an award ceremony for Moscow’s best-kept yard. The use of the Air Force is three times cheaper than conventional snow removal methods and the proposal was quickly approved. The Times reports a spokesman for the public utilities department was not able to explain how a “big and serious snowfall” would be identified or be deemed worthy of deploying the Air Force. “The mayor has said it will only be a couple of times per winter,” he said. Not everyone thinks the Mayor has a sound plan. Some regional officials have been critical of his ideas. Pavel Lykov, who works in the region’s public utilities and transport department, told the Izvestia newspaper, “When they prevent clouds in Moscow in the summer, the cucumbers turn yellow. … The question is: is it safe?”