It hasn’t rained or snowed in Beijing for 115 days and counting

Nothing but moderately blue skies

While Beijing has seen significantly fewer grey skies this winter than in years past, it’s also seen far less rain or snow — or, more accurately, no rain or snow at all.

For more than 115 consecutive days now, China’s capital city has been without “effective precipitation” — defined by Beijing’s climate observatory as as precipitation of 0.1 mm or more — it longest dry spell in at least 45 years.

That historic stretch is worrying for a number of reasons, one of them being that in just four years, Beijing is scheduled to host the next Winter Olympics.

Back in 2015, Beijing managed to beat Almaty for the honor of hosting the event after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) decided that the city’s lack of snowfall wasn’t really such a big deal.

In its bid evaluation, the IOC explained that a contingency plan would be put in place so that the Olympic Games would rely on “stockpiled man-made snow.”

Hey, if Beijing can turn its sky blue, surely it can figure out how to turn some mountains white.