Nuking hurricanes
September 18, 2003 1:38 PM   Subscribe

Hurricanes really suck. Luckily our friends at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association have posted a FAQ to answer our questions. No matter how moronic the questions are.
posted by patrickje (15 comments total)
 
Hm. I was always under the impression that tornadoes suck, while hurricanes clearly blow.

Thanks, I'll be here all night. But I actually do love the response to the question about nuking a hurricane. I'd seen those kinds of figures for the amount of power inherent in a hurricane, but I'd never seen a figure for how much air you'd have to add to the eye to raise the pressure. Interesting stuff.
posted by Chanther at 1:48 PM on September 18, 2003


There's a company in South Florida making powder with the intention of damping storms by dropping this powder on them.. same guy that started marketing Dynamat. Neat idea, but very impractical.
posted by shadow45 at 1:53 PM on September 18, 2003


The National Center for Atmospheric Research can tell you how many elephants make a hurricane ...
posted by carter at 1:59 PM on September 18, 2003


No such thing as a stupid question. Just stupid people. =) That said, I tried nuking my breakfast this morning and my eyebrows fell off.
posted by ZachsMind at 2:00 PM on September 18, 2003


Everybody knows that hurricanes are caused by hummingbirds sneezing. A well-placed nuke would take care of that. It's not such a ridiculous question.
posted by dness2 at 2:23 PM on September 18, 2003


Well yeah but you can't get the hummingbirds to sit still long enough to ...oh I get it! Take out the entire eastern coastline and no more hummingbirds! What a wonderful idea! Well except for the birds on the western coast line, but we could nuke over there too. And of course the central states, and then there's the outlying areas. A couple dozen worldwide oughtta take care of that pesky diseased hummingbird problem. And we better hurry cuz soon it's gonna be cold and flu season!
posted by ZachsMind at 2:26 PM on September 18, 2003


Wait... if you need only 500,000,000 tons of air to calm down a hurricane, would a really big underwater nuclear explosion be able to vaporise that much water? How many gallons of water will a ton of TNT vaporise? How much damage would the resulting wave do? Hmm...

Clearly, the only way to know what effect a nuclear blast would have on a hurricane is to try it.
posted by sfenders at 2:27 PM on September 18, 2003


How do you stop a Hurricane? Simple
posted by sixpack at 2:28 PM on September 18, 2003


Heh. Best laugh of the day.
posted by ColdChef at 2:41 PM on September 18, 2003


Nuking a hurricane? Absolutely insane.

Nuking the moon? A sound idea.
posted by davidmsc at 2:44 PM on September 18, 2003


Wasn't that creepy Edward Teller fellow a proponent of using hydrogen bombs to stop hurricanes? I'm glad that wiser heads prevailed.
posted by Soliloquy at 2:49 PM on September 18, 2003


no. hurricanes blow, tornados suck.
posted by quonsar at 6:20 PM on September 18, 2003


ah crap. 4 hours, 32 minutes late.
posted by quonsar at 6:29 PM on September 18, 2003


Given that hurricanes effectly suck a whole bunch of energy out of whatever it is they suck it out of (and put it into whatever they put it into) my stupid question is this:

If you stopped a hurricane, what would happen to whatever it is the hurricane would have taken its energy from? Know what I mean?
posted by five fresh fish at 6:59 PM on September 18, 2003


CNN had Bill Nye on this morning, and he repeated this myth.
posted by 2sheets at 9:03 PM on September 18, 2003


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