Posted on 09/22/2005 4:09:45 PM PDT by Cagey
DENVER Sep 22, 2005 — It sounds like a great idea: Let's just blast hurricanes like Rita and Katrina out of the sky before they hurt more people. Or, at least weaken the storms and steer them away from cities.
Atmospheric scientists say it's wishful thinking that we could destroy or even influence something as huge and powerful as a hurricane. They abandoned such a quest years ago after more than two decades of inconclusive government-sponsored research.
Private companies have conducted tests on a much smaller scale, but have made little progress despite initially claiming to erase storm clouds from the atmosphere.
Full Rita Coverage Track Rita 1900 Galveston Storm Was America's Deadliest | Photos
"It would be like trying to move a car with a pea shooter," said hydrometeorologist Matthew Kelsch of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder. "The amount of energy involved in a hurricane is far greater that anything we're going to impart to it."
The federal government's hurricane modification program was called Project Stormfury. The idea was raised during the Eisenhower administration after several major storms hit the East Coast in the mid-1950s, killing 749 people and causing billions in damages.
But it wasn't until 1961 that initial tests were conducted on Hurricane Esther with a Navy plane releasing silver iodide crystals. Some reports indicate winds were reduced by 10 percent to 30 percent.
During Stormfury, scientists also seeded hurricanes in 1963, 1969 and 1971 over the open Atlantic Ocean far from land.
Researchers dropped silver iodide, a substance that serves as an effective ice nuclei, into clouds just outside of the hurricane's eyewall. The idea was that a new ring of clouds would form around the artificial ice nuclei. The new clouds were supposed to change rain patterns and form a new eyewall that would collapse the old one. The reformed hurricane would spin more slowly and be less dangerous.
Sometimes, the experiments appeared to work. Hurricane Debbie in 1969 was seeded twice over four days by several aircraft. Researchers noted that its intensity waxed and waned by up to 30 percent.
FYI
The real story is that the storm simply went throgh normal natural eyewall replacements, which weren't fully understood at the time, thus they thought they'd actually had an effect on the storm.
The entire US inventory of depth charges wouldn't make the slightest bit of difference.
If Clark Kent can reverse time, what's a little wind?
I'll tell you what. If a hurricane is heading toward Houston, they mess with it, and it changes track FOR ANY REASON, and hits, say the Florida panhandle, the lawyers would have a field day.
Perhaps Nathan meant this kind of depth charge.
Why not spend half-a-billion sending seeding clouds with dry ice, or simply spraying cold water on the cloud tops of building storms.
BS. All we have to do is stick a big sharp icicle into it's eye.
Thats right people. Nothing you can do will ever weaken the power of storms generated by Karl Rove's Weather Machine ! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA !!!!
;-)
If you want a Google GMail account, FReepmail me.
They're going fast!
Wonder what multiple fuel-air-explosive, FAEs would do inside the eye? This is the weapon they were talking about to create huge over-pressure to colapse underground bunkers.
We'e talking 'bout hurricanse not Die Hard with a Vengeance
Considering multiple megaton fusion nukes inside the eye would have no effect other than to make the rain radioactive, FAEs wouldn't have the slightest effect.
Nope, never touch the stuff.
Nuke them!
This is definitely not an area where I have any depth of knowledge, but I've always been curious.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.