Could we bomb a hurricane
 

This has been something I have wondered since at least teh ffith grade. What woudl happen if we were to drop a bomb into the eye of a hurricane? Would it destroy the storm, dissipate it into multiple leseer storms?

Anyone have any knowledge or ideas here?

we were talking about this at work the other day. I think it would need to be a bomb designed to blow UP when it exploded, not down in the sea...I think that would cause underwater earthquakes and such.

I'm interested in the possibility too

Well ceertain bombs are designed to detonate at given heights so that wouldn't be a problem..maybe. I was mainly wondering if the bomb would be able to destabilize the whole storm. I have been to museums that make the little smoke hurricane thingees and if you stick you r finger in the middle, the smoke funnel breaks up.

i think it might run the risk of intensifying the storm. If hurricanes are driven by all the hot air they suck up from the ocean, then adding more heat to the eye may be counter-productive...

I couldn't say for sure though.

It sounds like the plot of an Irwin Allen movie...

Hurricanes don't move very fast, but you'd have to hit the eye at dead center... could a bomb get that precise... and could you get a plane or something else in close enough to get to the eye of the storm.

http://wgntv.trb.com/news/weather/we...es/001176.html

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/reso...k/wfaqhurm.htm

They're too big, and our bombs would be like dropping a pea in a bowl of grapes. We can get planes into hurricanes (matter of fact, thats how they GET information about hurricanes -- a satellite can't tell you some of the more important details).

EDIT to add:
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/reso...k/wfaqhurm.htm
Picture of our "hurricane hunter" planes capable of flying into them...

Yeah, I was gonna say the same thing as Jinn. Hurricanes are absolutely massive, hundreds of miles wide...while a bomb would have enough impact to physically move a mile at most. I assume it wouldn't do jackshit because of the incredible size difference.

-Lasereth

Since the only bombs we have big enough to even make it close would be some sort of nuke, just think of the joy of not only a hurricane but a radioactive hurricane.

MMmmmmmm I smell a movie plot.

Ok since you read it here first, we can sue the eventual producer.. and I will give you all a cut of the winnings.

bruce willis would star as the lovable but gruff sea captain.... he'd need a love interest because no disaster movie is complete without a side love story.

The only thing I think would have a chance would be to drop massive amounts of dry ice into the eye.... but the amount needed would be so much and how we would get enough there in time would be a massive problem.

Basically short of being able to control cold air fronts and being able to push them into the storms eye..... there is nothing we will ever be able to do..... man has for centuries tried to control nature and her power is too great...... as it should be. It's a way to control population and keep man's ego in check.

I'd volunteer as the love interest if you got Alan Rickman or Colin Firth to play the lead

(sorry that wasnt on topic was it?)

Apparently the idea has been floating around for a while. Back in april when i made this thread http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...ht=space+spies There was a picture that went witht he linked article:
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/1...n_mol_full.jpg

Notice the small craft to the left of the station shooting at a hurricane off the coast of florida :p

(comparison)
http://www.popular-communications.co...ane%20copy.jpg

Isn't there a tv show coming out in the fall about some kind of freaky hurricane and aliens or radioactive fallout or something?

I think we should try it. With one of those ones out in the middle of nowhere. Someone help me out here, if exposed to superhot air from a bomb or something, wouldn't the resulting massive temperature drop afterwards when it moves over cooler water cause the storm to dissipate?

Maybe we could get Demi Moore as the love interest and Ashton as the apprentice who also loves the girl..... with much fighting between the 2

Then the last scene is Bruce saving NYC from the Hurricane sacrificing himself as Ashton sweeps down and saves Demi and holds her saying "thank you, your sacrifice shall never be forgotten..... then the camera closes on Demi and Ashton kissing passionately........ as Bruce's hand rises out of the water...... for the sequel?????

What do we call it.. "Storm Bombers?" ..... "Eyemageddon" .... "Hellicane" any other ideas?

Ooooooh .. Steve Buscemi MUST be in it.

Ok this movie will go down as follows.....

1. This will be in a 'near future' setting, after not only NO but now Miami has been devastated with a hurricane.

2. We will blame the hurricane on global warming and not mention the hurricane cycle, as global warming is hip (note this isn't a political statement by me, just what sells for hollywood).

3. We will have a failing, desperate, election year, and vaguely republican president who wants to score points by 'saving' New New Orleans. (again, we are selling this to hollywood).

4. We will have a 'scientist', slightly older than the soon to be mentioned protagonist scientist who has a theory about nuking these things and won't listen to any other arguments.

5. We will have the attractive yet unconventional scientist who will desperately try to get the word out to stop the older less attractive scientist. He will succeed in convincing the right people to not drop the bomb yet there will not be time to stop the drop. He will then say something like 'God help us all'. If we are desperate for dialog we will mention 'chaos theory'.

6. Both scientists will be white males (again for hollywood).

7. The explosion will not only make the hurricane radioactive, it will also make it twice as strong. When the older scientist says 'this is impossible, those readings can't be right!' the younger one will say 'congratulations, you destroyed the f5 and turned it into an f7.' or some such nonsense.

8. Love interests! First we will have the little guy, I like the ship captain idea, and perhaps we can have a forrest gump like moment in the storm where he rides it out. He will then witness the bomb blast, and somehow his wife and new baby will be involved. The young scientist will also have a love interest. She will be a hard assed (both laterally and figuratively) FBI agent who first thinks he is crazy but will come to see his genius and they will have sex at some point when they are caught in the storm in some sort of 'fuck me before we die' type of moment but they will both live, saved by the power of their love.

9. We will mostly ignore the radioactive part except that it means there will be no safe drinking water. Most of the film will be watching things fall over and giant waves break things but later we can show sick children from the radioactive water.

10. Ok I'm running out of steam here, but we need to tie this in with mans hubris, and all that stuff with some hopeful possibility that if we only act now we can save the future!

I don't think the bomb idea would work, though I do like Ustwo's movie idea. (Watch out, it'll probably the big summer hit disaster movie next year.)

One idea I've thought up though, would be to build some sort of large-scale refrigeration system along the coastline that we could turn on when a hurricane is approaching and cool off the waters causing the hurricane to begin weakining before it hits land.

Ustwo- again, you and I are in total agreement. Very well put. Maybe the president can be played by Ben Kingsly, the older scientist can be played by Hugo Weaving, the younger scientist by Orlando Bloom (despite the fact he isn't old enough to be a doctor of anything), the sea captian can be Juaquin Pheonix (and his wife can be some crappy actor from TV), the hard assed FBI chick can be Jeri Ryan, and the voice of the mutated hurricane can be played by John Goodman (you heard me).

It will turn out that the hurricane hypnotized Brad Pitt into cheating on Jennifer Aniston and everyone will live happily ever after (the hurricane falls in love with el ninio).

The best way to control the weather would be to simply learn to control either the EM field of the planet or to create giant hair dryers. Is this serious? I'm not sure how to respond. I mean no disrespect if this is serious.

One of the crew, at some point, must say, "I'm too old for this shit!"

And I think we might need Jeff Goldblum to be a bumbling but wise scientist who says, "You spend so much time wondering if you could, you didn't think about whether you should!"

There is a guy who has a company called Dynomat that says he can reduce the power of a hurricane with an "absorbent powder". Supposedly he stopped a thunderstorm with it.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...0/MN139597.DTL

http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/tcfaqHED.html

Go down to section C, questions C4 and C5. They cover some good information about ideas and attempts to weaken Hurricanes.

Oh yes - that is the guy who could get me to watch almost any lame science fiction/disaster movie. Yummy

No, no, the President will be played by an African American/Latina woman so they can address the minoity issue. It's Hollywood. Unfortunately, she will be "guided" by her more superior all-male cabinet in the wrong direction until she falls in love with and follows the suggestions of the scientist who saves the day and her re-election campaign.

(Edit: And the TV movie version will air on June 1, 2006 directly following Locusts! on CBS.)

Hurricanes are driven by temperature differences over huge expanses of the ocean; not only is the area large but the total energy in the equation is massive. A category 5 hurricane has an energy conversion rate of around "600 billion kilowatts, equal to about 200 times the world's electrical generating capacity, or 10 Hiroshima-size bombs exploding every second." (http://starbulletin.com/2005/09/04/business/brill.html)

Basically, we don't have the power much less the ability to properly apply it. A better application of effort would be to start building things above sea level.

Well, no not really. Only NO was below sea level. The rest of the areas in the gulf coast that were levelled by Katrina were already above sea level. Building above sea level doesn't help you withstant winds or storm surges. Building incredibly strong buildings will help with the winds (note the guy in NO with the "hurricane proof" house that's built mainly out of poured concrete. He lost some faschia up by the top but otherwise didn't have much damage at all).

Im guessing.... Since the energy is generated by the violent mix of warm and cold air, you need to bome a WIDE area to achieve any impact. Outside of nuclear weapons (bad idea cuz of fallout), I don't really see any CLEAN way to do this

I don't think anyone's mentioned this yet, but do we really want to stop a hurricane after it's been formed? What I mean is that everything on this planet happens for a reason and why should we destroy something that Mother Nature thought was necessary. Yes, hurricanes are destructive; yes, people die; yes, it costs us millions or billions to rebuild, but that's all part of living on a dynamic planet.

All that energy has to go somewhere. If we start destroying hurricanes maybe the activity in Tornado Alley will increase tenfold. Or maybe the intensity and duration of thunderstorms in North America will increase.

Our time and money is better spent on making sure buildings/levies/etc. can withstand the next Cat. 5 hurricane that blows by.

I think we should follow the derisive advice of others on this board who suggest that people don't live anywhere near potential natural disasters... (not to be a jerk but man are people who do this stupid).

The US is just too dangerous to inhabit. Everyone out.

Thats irritates me for some time, why do you build wooden huts instead of stone/concrete houses? A Stone House wouldn't survive everything, but I think they would survive the most "normal" storms which are leveling wood houses on a regular basis.

Also running telefone and power cables in the underground could als be a wise move :)

Come now, surely you know why people did it that way... it is cheaper.

I think I agree with Jinn, if we attempted to drop a bomb into a hurricane it would be like dropping a grain of salt into a couple of gallons of water. Basically nothing. Also with the heat created by the bomb, the hurricane may just get stronger. If the bomb were built to include dry ice, well for one thing, there would need to be a hell of a lot of dry ice. Also I am not sure you could suspend the dry ice long enough to acutally create an effect on the hurricane. I think it would just evaporate.

I propose the sea captain be older.Having lost his wife and family to a Hurricane he now tracks them for a living.After witnessing the nuke drop,the scientists come to him to ask him for help tracking the storm.He then sacrifices himself at the end to stop the storm.

Needs to be a scene of Statue of liberty's arm being ripped off and flying into the empire state building.

(Ignoring the movie threadjack portion of this thread)

A more serious proposal for cutting down the power of a storm would be to spread a surfactant on the surface of the water.
http://www.physorg.com/news5420.html

There are some problems that are going to have to be solved without the use of bombs - I think hurricanes is one of them, failing a way to destroy them better defence and more preperation in the face of them would be a good way to go

Bomb a hurricane :D

Why not bomb a bomb?
bomb a thunderstorm?
Bomb a supermarket cos you don't like the prices? :rolleyes:

Thank fuck you aren't President and don't let George Bush read this thread ffs!!!!! :eek:

I don't think we'll all fit in canuckistan, plus would you really want some of usin your beautiful country?

It's the people in the US that are dangerous - the land is perfectly safe.

Irwin Allen?!?
Man, are you dating yourself. I don't think half of these kids were alive when he did his last movie. ;)

edit...That reminds me...I want to rent The Poseidon Adventure. Pamela Sue Martin...yum! :D

the Towering Inferno-- Steve mcQueen and Paul newman in the same movie... He had some ... interesting... movies -- Flood!!! Fire!!! Lost in Space!! King of the Disaster Flicks!

Wasn't going to play the Inferno card. Ooh, those complex story-lines & star-stuffed casts.

I recall being fairly young and planning ahead with family to see that one. It meant going to our then new and very unfamiliar multi-plex with the expensive popcorn. (later to become an A-dult cinemAh) "Hey, what's deep throat?"

I still think of Allen flicks as the first blockbusters though there's probably someone here who's thinking the same thing about DeMille.

I remember people talking about this twenty-five years ago (now, that's dating yourself!). An article in USAToday says it's like trying to stop an elephant by throwing a ping-pong ball at it. Hurricanes cover tens of thousands of square miles, and the heat energy released by a hurricane absolutely dwarfs our most powerful explosives, thousands of times over. A bomb detonation would just render the storm radioactive as well.

bombing a tornado would be feasible coz its smaller...few feet to a dozen feet wide at the eye...tho you would have to be able to predict where one would be making a touchdown
a hurricane eye is miles wide...only a nuke would do the job...but then better hurricane then a nuke...usually

If that energy is dissipated into turbulent flow rather than an organized system, it will collapse on itself with a net increase in entropy.

I've been reading Chaos by James Gleick, and I've been pondering the effect of chains of massive fuel-air bombs on hurricanes. Instead of hitting the eye, I took into consideration that there are many warm and cold areas within a hurricane, and that air spirals in toward the eye. If we were to disrupt several lines of air into the eye, I think that htere's a potential not to destroy the hurricane, but to divert it by throwing it off-balance. The basic idea is that sustaining turbulent flow in a confined but unbounded area requires much more energy than sustaining ordered flow.

It's all working out in my head, but there's probably something I'm missing.

You are missing the jillion fuel air bombs required to significantly change the system. You need a lot of energy, more than you realise.

Your idea of disrupting the energy lines of the system has merit but it would probably be better to start earlier and in a different way. I was thinking of something along the lines of massive reflective oil slicks to lessen the heating of ocean water in certain areas during certain building cycles, which could significantly decrease the strength of a potential storm if not prevent some completely.

I was thinking about minor alterations of its course as it starts up, before it's a full-force storm. I was considering doing this to a tropical depression when it was still a manageable size. It would still take a lot of energy (as far as I know, fuel-air results in the most concussive force short of anyhting nuclear) but the cost of disrupting a storm could be less than the potential loss of life and property.

Concussive force is useless, remember we are talking about air formations here. Creating pressure waves is not going to do anything (except perhaps squeeze some moisture from the air temporarily). After you have set off your bombs the air is still going to be about in the same place as before.

I believe that, under the rules of the present administration, the only logical reason to bomb a hurricane would be if we were attacked by an earthquake. :D

Ok so now our misguided scientist is using fuel air bombs, we can still do the movie!

(Odds are messing with something like a hurricane is BAD)

News events of the past couple days have convinced me our best weapon to minimize hurricane damage and fatalities would be to drop a 10MP/B bomb (MP/B=Million Politician/Bureaucrat) in the hurricane eye, ideally while it's still at sea. Of course, being unable to locate 10 million of the asses should in no way prevent us from making a best effort attempt.

Since there doesn't seem to be much of an overlap between Slashdot and TFP, here's a link to Scientific American: Controlling Hurricanes from last year. I'm too tired to figure out the conclusions, I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader.

There was some made for television disaster movie on last year - i think with dana delaney as the beautiful, brilliant, and misunderstood scientist, where there was an earthquake threatning to destroy the west coast (in fact, it took out the space needle) A well placed nuclear weapon stopped the earthquake before it got any worse...

/me hates insomnia they play the worst movies at 3am

I saw this in the paper today (The Hartford Courant). I found it online, but I can't find a link that works without a membership.



Hurricanes Defy Attempts At Control

Scientists Say Storms Too Powerful To Divert
September 23, 2005
By JOSEPH B. VERRENGIA, Associated Press

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.

"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 than 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 damage.

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 re-formed 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.

For cloud seeding to be successful, clouds must contain sufficient supercooled water that is still liquid even though it is below 32 degrees Fahrenheit.

Raindrops form when the artificial nuclei and the supercooled water combine.

But scientists also learned that hurricanes contain less supercooled water than other storm clouds, so seeding was unreliable. And, hurricanes grow and dissipate all on their own, even forming new walls of clouds called "concentric eyewall circles."

This made it impossible to determine whether storm reductions were the result of human intervention. Project Stormfury was abandoned in the 1980s after spending hundreds of millions of dollars.

Other storm modification methods that have been suggested include cooling the tropical ocean with icebergs and spreading particles or films over the ocean surface to inhibit storms from evaporating heat from the sea.

Occasionally, somebody suggests detonating a nuclear weapon to shatter a storm.

Researchers say hurricanes would dwarf such measures. For example, Hurricane Rita measures about 400 miles across.

According to the center for atmospheric research, the heat energy released by a hurricane equals 50 to 200 trillion watts or about the same amount of energy released by exploding a 10-megaton nuclear bomb every 20 minutes.