Well, it was bound to happen sometime. There are myriad stories related to Beijing's preparations to host the 2008 Summer Olympics, yet few of them capture the imaginations of foreign journalists as much as 1) authorities' efforts to control the weather, and 2) authorities' efforts to control the media. Today it seems that both stories collided on the fourth ring road, right across from the Olympics Tower of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG).

Here's what happened. It was a typical August day in Beijing: muggy, hot, polluted. The sort of sauna-like weather that will bedevils visiting athletes during the Beijing Games, which open almost exactly a year from now, on Aug. 8, 2008. Pegged to the "one year to go" date,  Reporters Without Borders (RSF) called a press-conference-plus-street-demonstration at 3 PM to push for the release of detained journalists and more freedom of expression before the Olympic Games.

RSF planned to launch a guerilla-style protest on an overpass near BOCOG. But the heavens weren't exactly cooperating. First it poured down rain, then it hailed - yup, hail in August. The downpour and pelting hailstones prompted assembled foreign correspondents to joke that Beijing's "Office of Weather Modification," which has been trying to perfect the art of artificially-induced rain for more than a year - had called up the storm to wash out the protest.

Now, it's true that China's weatherpeople have been working overtime to calibrate the timing and strength of their cloud-seeding, in hopes of being able to conjure up blues skies for the Olympics opening ceremony. But it remains to be seen whether they really have 100 percent control. I have to admit that very early on I became intrigued by China's Olympic weather-modifiers - and I know their strategy pretty much boils down to making it rain the day before they need blue skies, in hopes that showers will wash airborne pollution away for at least 24 hours. It actually does work, sometimes.

Still, rain-and-hail-on-demand at a specific moment is a tall order. And eventually the Reporters Without Borders crowd did manage to pull off a quickie protest, despite the inclement weather. Chinese security personnel then closed in, preventing some journalists' vehicles from departing the scene, stopping some media from filming, and even taking mobile phones (temporarily) away from others. I tried to phone a number of authorities at the Foreign Ministry and BOCOG to try to help sort out the mess, but couldn't raise anyone. (I'm president of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China, and often deal with officialdom about international media issues.) Did China's apparatchiks connive to be unavailable, knowing foreign correspondents would be out there howling in the rain?

Well, as much as we tend to perceive the Chinese regime as monolithic, omniscient and all-powerful - controlling even the weather -- the truth is more banal. Turns out the officials I tried to contact were attending a slew of OTHER press events pegged to the "one year to go" pre-anniversary. I don't believe Beijing authorities can control the weather or the international media, though they often try. The 2008 Olympics are a year away. But today's incident was meaty enough to feel conspiracy theorists until 2008 and beyond.