Northern Thailand Choking On Smoke From Forest Fires, Land Clearance - Reuters

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CHIANG MAI -- The smoke haze choking northern Thailand thickened on Wednesday as officials urged people to water the land and streets in hopes of getting enough humidity into the air to provoke rain.

Chiang Mai officials sent fire trucks to hose down streets and spray into the air in hopes of bringing rain to wash away smoke produced by dry season stubble burning, forest fires and wood-fired cooking.

Thailand's second city and tourist capital of the scenic north urged its residents to do the same, hoping the collective effort would increase humidity as the seasonal scourge reached its most dense levels in 15 years.

After three days of failure to provoke a deluge from the sky, rainmaking teams added water to their chemical mix of fertiliser and salt sprayed from planes to make rain in hopes that would be more effective, officials said. But the smoke from burning fields and forests in Thailand, Laos and Myanmar still poured into valleys in the hilly region as a cold front prevented it from escaping into the atmosphere.

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