A man in raincoat rides on a road in Beijing, capital of China, on February 12, 2009. Beijing welcomed its first rain in 110 days on Thursday morning, but experts say it was too little to end the city's lingering drought. [Xinhua]

Most of the northern Chinese provinces welcomed a rainy day on Thursday, as the country's worst drought in decades continued to batter the region.

Local authorities have prepared thousands of weather rocket shells to be fired into the sky to stimulate precipitation in Beijing, Hebei, Shanxi, Shaanxi and other provinces.

"The drought could be eased a little if the rainfall reached more than 10 mm," said Li Baodong, head of the Hebei Provincial Weather Modification Office.

By 3:00 PM on Thursday, the rainfall had reached 2.7 mm in some parts of the province, he said.

"We have deployed 2,707 rocket shells across the province," he said.

It was not immediately known how many rocket shells were used during Thursday's operation to artificially stimulate rain in the province.

The rainy weather is expected to last until Friday in most of the northern provinces, according to the National Meteorological Center (NMC).

The provinces of Shaanxi, Shanxi, Hebei, Henan, Shandong, Anhui, Jiangsu and Hubei, the major wheat-growing areas that have been hard-hit by an unusually severe drought, will have rain or snow, the NMC predicted.

Total rainfall will be less than 10 millimeters but will provide moderate relief from the grim drought, it said.

Many regions have not seen rainfall for more than 100 days.

Also Thursday, Beijing welcomed its first rain in 110 days, with a maximum precipitation of 3.9 mm. so far.

"The rain is too little to effectively dispel the lingering drought, but people can feel the air is getting humid," said Duan Li, chief weatherwoman with the Beijing Meteorological Bureau.

The capital is enduring its longest drought spell in 38 years, according to bureau records. It has not seen rain since October 24.

The bureau said no rain was forecast for at least the next 10 days.

The weather department is prepared to artificially enhance the precipitation.

Zhang Qiang, deputy director of the Beijing Weather Modification Command Center, said 25 weather rocket launch bases in Beijing had been prepared for cloud seeding, which, theoretically, could increase the rain by 10 percent.

"We have so far fired rocket shells containing 312 cigarette-size sticks of silver iodide at the bases," Zhang said. "The operation is continuing."

The worst dry spell in 50 years has parched more than 40 percent of the nation's total wheat land, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

According to the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters, more than 11 million hectares of the affected wheat lands had been irrigated in the nation's eight wheat-growing provinces as of Wednesday.

The affected crop areas came to more than 18 million hectares by Wednesday, with 4.65 million people and 2.33 million livestock facing drinking water shortages.

China has declared the highest level of emergency in response to the drought, conducted cloud-seeding operations and allocated 86.7 billion yuan (about US$12.69 billion) as subsidies to farmers.

In addition, the central government has decided to earmark 400 million yuan in drought relief for local governments.

(Xinhua News Agency February 13, 2009)