Why Trump can't bomb a hurricane - or seed it either
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It figures that, on my first day of summer vacation, there would be some big weather-related news. Here it is:
I'll keep this brief, but the answer to this one is pretty easy to answer, due to popular demand. This was something I was taught in school 30 years ago, and NOAA's NHC even has a FAQ called "Subject: C5c: Why don't we try to destroy tropical cyclones by nuking hurricanes" (written at least 25 years ago). The FAQ is summarized in this video:
On multiple occasions, President Trump has reportedly said we should drop a nuclear bomb in the eye of a hurricane to keep it at bay. Here’s why that wouldn’t work.
I'll let that science speak for itself. (For what it's worth, Trump says he did not say this, and Hillary keeps it simple by saying "We should not nuke hurricanes.)" Ah, politics!
A followup question might be: "What about cloud seeding? That's worked before, right?"
Well, yes and no. Weather modification through cloud-seeding has been done, but the success has been getting clouds to rain more, not less.
Cloud seeding was tried with hurricanes a few times, resulting in spectacular failures. In 1947, the U.S. government attempted to modify a hurricane that was moving out to sea, by seeding the clouds in it. After they did, the storm did a 180 and hit Georgia, causing a PR nightmare and putting hurricane cloud-seeding out of business until the 1960s.
In 1965, after the launch of a new hurricane-seeding effort called "Project Stormfury," a hurricane considered a "good candidate" for seeding by the government also turned around and hit Florida, even though they hadn't seeded it, causing more bad PR news. Cuba's Fidel Castro claimed Project Stormfury was an attempt to "weaponize hurricanes." After millions of dollars had been spent, the Navy left the project in the early 1970s, and it was officially canceled in 1983.
The legacy of the project is that the science wasn't really sound and natural processes were mistaken for man-made success. For example, it was found that hurricanes "seed themselves" with concentric eyewalls.
