# Can we kill a hurricane? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 1, 2014, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-kill-a-hurricane/687412 "2014-05-01T02:54:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Enola\_Straight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dec6dc/32.png) [@Enola\_Straight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enola_Straight)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2014, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-kill-a-hurricane/687412/1 "2014-05-01T02:54:17Z")
Would flying a fleet of Hercules and Starlifter cargo planes full of Dry Ice into the eye wall and dumping the ice at altitude do anything? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2014, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-kill-a-hurricane/687412/2 "2014-05-01T02:57:02Z")
It’d look cool. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c57346/32.png) [@Little\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Pig)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2014, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-kill-a-hurricane/687412/3 "2014-05-01T03:12:25Z")
Let’s put this one to bed right up front. Detonating a nuclear device inside of a hurricane would just result in a nuclear hurricane. (I could swear I am quoting The Master on this but my google-fu produced No Hits.) ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2014, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-kill-a-hurricane/687412/4 "2014-05-01T03:17:31Z")
The energy is a typical hurricane is many times greater than all the nuclear weapons that have ever been tested combined, so probably not. [Here’s NOAA’s take on it.](http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/C5c.html) ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2014, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-kill-a-hurricane/687412/5 "2014-05-01T03:26:07Z")
Is Dry Ice slang for nuclear weapons? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c57346/32.png) [@Little\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Pig)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2014, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-kill-a-hurricane/687412/6 "2014-05-01T03:32:58Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Is Dry Ice slang for nuclear weapons? No,it is not. My response was preemptive. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2014, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-kill-a-hurricane/687412/7 "2014-05-01T04:25:35Z")
apparently not ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2014, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-kill-a-hurricane/687412/8 "2014-05-01T04:31:45Z")
Wasn’t there a proposal to build what would basically be giant windfarms in strategic parts of the ocean that would absorb hurricane energy before they made landfall? ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2014, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-kill-a-hurricane/687412/9 "2014-05-01T12:42:03Z")
I don’t believe we’d have the amount of dry ice necessary to thermally disrupt a hurricane by the time you have an actual eye wall going. And tropical cyclones are a natural phenomenon of the thermal balance of the atmosphere and ocean. If you dissipate a hurricane that has to still be achieved somehow. We built towns in low-lying land in their path, that’s our problem. ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_Door](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Bill\_Door](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_Door)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2014, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-kill-a-hurricane/687412/10 "2014-05-01T12:57:48Z")
As a general rule, I’d say dumping a greenhouse gas into a heat engine would be less than an optimal solution. Even if you could make and dump enough dry ice to make it work once, it’ll just cause bigger problems down the road. ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2014, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-kill-a-hurricane/687412/11 "2014-05-01T13:41:58Z")
> [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > Wasn’t there a proposal to build what would basically be giant windfarms in strategic parts of the ocean that would absorb hurricane energy before they made landfall? Don’t know about windfarms, but there was [this idea](http://freakonomics.com/2012/11/06/another-look-at-an-unorthodox-hurricane-prevention-idea/) for transporting warm surface water down to the depths of the ocean, eliminating the source of energy that powers hurricanes. That link doesn’t do it justice; they discussed it in much greater detail in their book, Super Freakonomics. As for the OP’s inquiry…a C-130 can carry about 45,000 pounds of dry ice. This weighs as much as a column of atmosphere covering 20 square feet of earth. The smallest [hurricane](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane) is 62 miles in diameter, covering a total area of 84,166,785,052 square feet. Not going to do the math on sublimation and heat capacity, but if you wanted to deliver even just 1/10,000th of this very small storm’s mass in dry ice, that would mean 400,000 planeloads. There are about 2300 C-130’s in existence (and about 300 C-141’s), so each plane would have to make 150 sorties. Each plane probably won’t be able to do more than four flights per day, so the whole endeavor would take at least 37 days. I don’t think we get that much warning from when a tropical depression is first identified to when it makes landfall as a hurricane. And that’s not even discussing the logistics and price tag for producing (and transporting to the airfields) 18 billion pounds of dry ice. Or whether dumping such a small quantity of dry ice (1/10,000th of the storm’s mass) will make a noticeable difference in the storm’s intensity. Large hurricanes can be a couple thousand miles in diameter, with many hundreds of times the mass of our very small candidate storm. ---
**Author:** ![Enola\_Straight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dec6dc/32.png) [@Enola\_Straight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enola_Straight)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2014, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-kill-a-hurricane/687412/12 "2014-05-02T01:45:00Z")
We don’t need to seed the WHOLE hurricane, just the eye wall. The eye of the storm is much like a pirouetting figure skater; the tighter the arms are pulled into the body, the faster the skater spins. Dumping Dry Ice into the eye wall would disrupt a small area of the eye and, in effect, make it wider. ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2014, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-kill-a-hurricane/687412/13 "2014-05-02T17:47:05Z")
> [@Enola\_Straight](#): > > We don’t need to seed the WHOLE hurricane, just the eye wall. > > The eye of the storm is much like a pirouetting figure skater; the tighter the arms are pulled into the body, the faster the skater spins. > > Dumping Dry Ice into the eye wall would disrupt a small area of the eye and, in effect, make it wider. 😕 Your OP asked: > [@Enola Straight](#): > > Would flying a fleet of Hercules and Starlifter cargo planes full of Dry Ice into the eye wall and dumping the ice at altitude do anything? And now you’re declaring, in no uncertain terms: > [@Enola Straight](#): > > Dumping Dry Ice into the eye wall would disrupt a small area of the eye and, in effect, make it wider. If you’ve got a cite for that claim, then you’ve answered your own OP. If you don’t have a cite, then I don’t know why you’re making that claim. ---
**Author:** ![HipGnosis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/76d3ee/32.png) [@HipGnosis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HipGnosis)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2014, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-kill-a-hurricane/687412/14 "2014-05-02T18:32:26Z")
> [@Enola\_Straight](#): > > We don’t need to seed the WHOLE hurricane, just the eye wall. > > The eye of the storm is much like a pirouetting figure skater; the tighter the arms are pulled into the body, the faster the skater spins. > > Dumping Dry Ice into the eye wall would disrupt a small area of the eye and, in effect, make it wider. Not quite the same thing. I know this, because I actually danced in the eye of a typhoon on Okinawa, Japan. It was eerily calm. For about 25 minutes. Then the rain resumed being blown thru the concrete walls (but from the other side). ---
**Author:** ![HipGnosis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/76d3ee/32.png) [@HipGnosis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HipGnosis)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2014, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-kill-a-hurricane/687412/15 "2014-05-02T18:46:58Z")
> [@Machine\_Elf](#): > > a C-130 can carry about 45,000 pounds of dry ice. This weighs as much as a column of atmosphere covering 20 square feet of earth. The smallest hurricane is 62 miles in diameter, covering a total area of 84,166,785,052 square feet. Not going to do the math on sublimation and heat capacity, but if you wanted to deliver even just 1/10,000th of this very small storm’s mass in dry ice, that would mean 400,000 planeloads. There are about 2300 C-130’s in existence (and about 300 C-141’s), so each plane would have to make 150 sorties. > … > Or whether dumping such a small quantity of dry ice (1/10,000th of the storm’s mass) will make a noticeable difference in the storm’s intensity. A quick google says dry ice expands 1,000 times in volume when it evaporates. I think that’d have more effect than the weight. But I agree we couldn’t drop enough fast enough. ---
**Author:** ![Enola\_Straight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dec6dc/32.png) [@Enola\_Straight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enola_Straight)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2014, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-kill-a-hurricane/687412/16 "2014-05-03T00:25:36Z")
> [@Machine\_Elf](#): > > 😕 > > Your OP asked: > > And now you’re declaring, in no uncertain terms: > If you’ve got a cite for that claim, then you’ve answered your own OP. > > If you don’t have a cite, then I don’t know why you’re making that claim. The idea is SUPPOSED to be this: > **[File:Project stormfury hypothesis.gif](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Project_stormfury_hypothesis.gif)** > > Project\_stormfury\_hypothesis.gif (300 × 384 pixels, file size: 15 KB, MIME type: image/gif) > From NOAA Hurricane Research Division > > العربية ∙ čeština ∙ Deutsch ∙ Zazaki ∙ English ∙ español ∙ eesti ∙ suomi ∙ français ∙ hrvatski ∙ magyar ∙ italiano ∙ 日本語 ∙ 한국어 ∙ македонски ∙ മലയാളം ∙ Plattdüütsch ∙ Nederlands ∙ polski ∙ português ∙ română ∙ русский ∙ sicilianu ∙ slovenščina ∙ Türkçe ∙ Tiếng Việt ∙ 简体中文 ∙ 繁體中文 ∙ +/− What ACTUALLY happens, though…☹ ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2014, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-kill-a-hurricane/687412/17 "2014-05-04T23:55:01Z")
> [@Little\_Pig](#): > > Let’s put this one to bed right up front. Detonating a nuclear device inside of a hurricane would just result in a nuclear hurricane. OTOH, dropping a dinosaur killer size asteroid on one at 20kps could totally ruin a hurricanes day. [4.2×10^23 Joules](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater)trumps [5.2 x 10^19 Joules/day](http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/D7.html) every time. Might be a bit tricky steering the thing in at the right place and time, but given a few decades serious effort, we could probably manage it. Unfortunately, people would probably prefer the hurricane to this method of eliminating a hurricane. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2014, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-kill-a-hurricane/687412/18 "2014-05-05T03:07:47Z")
What if we threw a bunch of sharks right into the center, could we kill it then? ---
**Author:** ![Enola\_Straight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dec6dc/32.png) [@Enola\_Straight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enola_Straight)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2014, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-kill-a-hurricane/687412/19 "2014-05-05T12:52:26Z")
If we did that, we would need to throw in some zombies and ninjas to kill the sharks… …and so it goes…😛 ---
**Author:** ![Finagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2014, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-kill-a-hurricane/687412/20 "2014-05-05T13:13:30Z")
> [@elfkin477](#): > > What if we threw a bunch of sharks right into the center, could we kill it then? No, but you’d save the SyFy channel the cost of making the next entry in the shark/tornado series.