My wife and I were arguing about this the other day and she swears I made this up. I recall in the mid 80s that there was talk of having a series of satellites over the planet that using some technology (lasers?) would be able to disrupt problematic weather patterns.
That is, if a tornado was forming over Alabama, it could disrupt the winds and either lessen it, or prevent it. Same goes for hurricanes off the Southeast coast, blizzards in the North, and even fog over major airports nationwide.
So was such a thing really in the planning stages and (presumably) scrapped because of cost, or did I just dream this up? Or is it actually being built without much fanfare from the media?