Six weeks worth of rain fell on greater Detroit on Monday, much of it during afternoon rush hour. Local drainage systems quickly topped out, and the deluge transformed highways into lakes studded with hundreds of stranded drivers and submerged cars. Flooded roads and highways in greater Detroit began to reopen on Wednesday, two days after the storm, according to The Wall Street Journal, but the cleanup and repair is likely to take months.

Averaged nationally, 2013 was a comparatively calm weather and climate year in the United States. There were fewer than 900 tornados, the least since 1989. The number of North Atlantic hurricanes was below average. Temperatures were only 0.3 degreesabove those of the 20thcentury average, tying with 1980 for 37thwarmest year in 119 years of record-keeping,and two to threedegrees cooler than 2012, the hottest year on record.

China is already doing plenty of things to the atmosphere above it, but most changes are byproducts of the country's marathon industrial revolution. Now China plans to make some purposeful atmospheric changes -namely making it rain, for the purpose of growing crops.