I have wondered for several years whether it might be possible, given sufficient warning, to send up a small squad of helicopters equipped with high-explosive missiles which could be launched into the column of a forming tornado and thus disrupt its formation and even blow it apart? Tornadoes are probably the only meteorological phenomena both destructive enough to be worth trying to disrupt, and small enough that it might be possible to do so.
Anyone have any thoughts?
An interesting idea, but those things have alot of energy behind them. I suspect that so much explosive power would be required that it would be a pyrric victory. Anyway, I don’t think the meteorologists can predict tornado formation accurately enough or early enough for this to work. Supercells (weatherman lingo for freakin’ powerfull T-storms) are still rather poorly understood.
“I had a feeling that in Hell there would be mushrooms.” -The Secret of Monkey Island
Yeah, I understand that there’s a lot of energy behind them. Of course, that also depends to a great degree on just how ‘big’ they are, from a few feet (at the bottom tip) to a quarter-mile wide+. However, my reading indicates that tornadoes are ‘chaotic’ phenomena, i.e., very small ‘inputs’ produce large ‘outputs’, depending on how and wher the energy is applied.
As for predicting them – well, the best estimates I’ve seen thus far is that they can be predicted up to 15 minutes before the storm actually ‘drops down’. Considering the damage they do, it doesn’t seem unreasonable that, on a likely day for tornado formation, that a dozen helicopters, dispersed over a regional area, might be able to respond quickly enough to try disrupting one.
For that matter, this is something that could probably be simulated on a computer.
A tornado is a very large system. We think of the funnel cloud as “the tornado”, but it is - to use an apt analogy - just the tip of the iceberg.
Assuming the explosion would have an effect, and assuming you could get the missile into the funnel cloud (it would have to fight the tornadic winds to get there), you might be able to disrupt the funnel cloud. But the system that created it would still be there, and would probably just spawn a new funnel within a few minutes.
In the end I doubt an explosion would have much effect - funnel clouds are alleged to be full of lightning, and I would think the end result of lightning compared to an explosive would be similar. (I am assuming we are’t going to nuke a funnel cloud…)
Tornados are caused by convection and a wiping action of two opposing weather fronts - a warm air layer close to the ground and moving in one direction (and wanting to rise) and a cold air layer moving in another direction at higher levels. If you wanted to disrupt the mechanism that starts tornados you have to change the entire edge of one or both of these fronts. A missile blast at the core of a forming tornado might have a small effect… for about two seconds and then the tornado would start up anyway.
…Sure would be neat, though, to fire all those rockets ‘n’ bombs and oops there goes another grain silo, dammit.
We all know what he really meams by “blown apart”. He’s been watching those old “Superfriends” episodes on TV again. Sorry dude, but your friend from Krypton cannot use his super breath on tornadoes anymore.
Can’t get the insurance.
Heck, wasn’t Wonder Woman able to disrupt a twister by flying around it in her transparent plane, going in the opposite direction at 10,000 miles per hour?
No reason Superman should get ALL the glory.
For what it’s worth, while tornadoes may not be stoppable, there is a weather phenomenon that we have tried to control with some success, I believe.
In northern Colorado, where I recently went to college, there was a small stretch of US 85 that had signs posted warning motorists to expect loud explosive sounds during severe weather. Rather than oh-so-helpful signs about thunder (which is what I thought at first), the signs were warning about a human attempt to mitigate the devastating effects of hail.
Apparently, a few farmers had what amounted to sonic cannons that were aimed into the clouds and fired when hail threatened. The idea was that the focused sonic booms would break up aggregating hail stones and cause them to fall before they got too big and caused too much damage. It sounded kind of kooky to me at first, but apparently it works fairly well. And I read that insurance companies love it because it saves them from paying out millions and millions when an ill-timed storm wipes out a half the state’s corn and wheat crops.
~ Complacency is far more dangerous than outrage ~
What’s this about sonic cannons busting up hailstones?
I don’t believe it. Can you back it up?
Are you sure you’re not confusing ultrasound and kidney stones?
Well Nickrz, I appreciate your skepticism, but yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m not getting this confused with ultrasound and kidney stones.
Unless, of course, the operations were being performed in a cornfield during severe weather on the side of a rural highway and the ultrasound bursts were so loud (and somehow audible) that the surgeons needed to post a warning to passing cars. Read my post carefully, man. Read my post carefully.
~ Complacency is far more dangerous than outrage ~
And just consider – if even a small tornado can do upwards of several dozens of millions of dollars in damage to residential neighborhoods and industrial areas, if a way could be found to make them ‘skip’ over certain areas, even if it meant they would come down somewhere else, I don’t see how it could fail NOT to be cost effective. In any event, I think it would be worth investigating the possibility . . .
The military was working for a time on breaking apart hurricanes. They stopped when it became obvious that by tampering with “Mother Nature” they left themselves wide open to law suits.
JTW (Just This Week) …
On the evening news, it was mentioned that the storms forming over the Gulf of Mexico pass over an area of warm water.
Due north of the Yucatan Peninsula.
Weather scientists refer to it as a hot spot.
This causes the storm to grow in intensity.
Scientists that are studying this phenomenon have discovered that if they could reduce that amount of moisture “drawn up” into the storm, it would control the intensity of the weather.
They are now thinking of dispersing oil (like vegetable oil), ahead of the storm’s predicted path, on the surface of the water.
This oil makes things “slippery” and not condusive to adding moisture (and the intensity) to the storm.
Not much would be needed - enough to cover 1.6 square kilometers (think metric) in surface area.
This is interesting because scientists are “fooling Mother Nature” and not blowing her up, etc.
Terence in Marietta, GA
Be someone’s hero
Nickrz, if you’re still interested, here is backup regarding the hail cannon’s existence. I unfortunately couldn’t find an article about their scientific principle or efficacy (which I was hoping to do). Instead, here is a partial story from the Denver Rocky Mountain News describing neighbors’ reactions to the cannons.
The RMN charges for the full article, so I hope this fragment will serve to convince you. If you’re interested in verifying the article’s authenticity, please go to http://archives.insidedenver.com/search.cgi?id= and type ‘hail cannon’ into the search line.
~ Complacency is far more dangerous than outrage ~
Well yes, the newspaper story does exist, but that’s a far cry from “apparently it works fairly well” and “insurance companies love it because it saves them from paying out millions and millions when an ill-timed storm wipes out a half the state’s corn and wheat crops.”
This is just a story about a crackpot farmer and has no scientific merit whatsoever.
Work like you don’t need the money…
Love like you’ve never been hurt…
Dance like nobody’s watching! …(Paraphrased)
Hurricanes put additional pressure on the North American tectonic plate, causing even more stress where it subsides under the Pacific plate (especially in the San Francisco Bay area). Hee hee.
Nickrz, the oceanic crust is being subducted below the continental.
Regards