Snow Rockets in China at the Asian winter games.?

I am a Brit who now lives and works in China. I live in the North in a city called Changchun. It is the centre of the Asian winter games that started last weekend. Since the start of the games, it has snowed and snowed. I spoke to my Chinese collegue about how long it will snow for and how come the snow just started at the start of the games (Normally it's very cold here but little snow)? He said the Chinese goverment sent up 30 Snow Rockets a few days ago. Thats what he'd seen on the news. I laughed but he was quite serious about what he said. So what's up with the snow rockets? Is there such a things? or more Chinese propaganda. ie. when it snows, the goverment tells the people, "Oh yeah, we did that, we sent up the snow rockets" and everyone says "wow!"