Thread: How to stop a hurricane ?

Get several ships loaded with 55 gallon drums of vegetable oil, and dump this oil in the sea directly in the path of the hurricane. The oil should spread out to cover the surface of a large area of ocean just before the hurricane arrives in that area.
Hurricanes get their energy from water evaporation carrying the sun's energy into the air to produce the winds. The oil slick caused by the vegetable oil should cut down the amount of water evaporation in the hurricane's path and prevent the hurricane from getting enough energy to sustain itself. So the hurricane should die out.
The vegetable oil should also be bio degradable and enter into the ocean's ecology in a short time, doing no permanent damge.

why 55

Originally Posted by ghost7584

Get several ships loaded with 55 gallon drums of vegetable oil, and dump this oil in the sea directly in the path of the hurricane. The oil should spread out to cover the surface of a large area of ocean just before the hurricane arrives in that area.
Hurricanes get their energy from water evaporation carrying the sun's energy into the air to produce the winds. The oil slick caused by the vegetable oil should cut down the amount of water evaporation in the hurricane's path and prevent the hurricane from getting enough energy to sustain itself. So the hurricane should die out.
The vegetable oil should also be bio degradable and enter into the ocean's ecology in a short time, doing no permanent damge.

should? do some math.

Same logic as how to stop an 18 wheeler doing 70mph down the hiway...send out a mosquito to crash full speed into the windshield and stop the truck dead in it's tracks.

I hope you were kidding. If not, so much for science in school.

Won't work, tried in small scale, the top layer of the oil gets sucked up straight away, exposing the water.
Good toughts though :P

The Atlantic Hurricanes are treated as if they are something special and can't be stopped. Yet Hawaii stops hurricanes so well that it wasn't until recently that people even realized that a storm was more unusual than others. If you go to the Wikipedia page for Hawaii Hurricanes you will see a very long list of hurricanes that died when they approached Hawaii.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hawaii_hurricanes

The only ones to hit and do wind damage of any significance hit Kauai.

What is going on in Hawaii is the mean height of the State of Hawaii is 3030 feet above sea level. The front line defending islands are much taller. Two of the three huge volcanoes standing guard are so tall that storms deposit snow on their summits. Every lb of snow that falls on hundreds of square miles of high plains of Hawaii removes 12,000 BTU from the storm Snow appears to be only one of two factors. The second factor is the volcanoes deflect wind from a hurricane and send it high up into the air where the jet stream grabs it and zips it away from the hurricane.

You can see this in a video on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_rxu0fJ2h8



Hawaii's system works so well that there hasn't been any measurable damage from high winds on any of the islands except Kauai. So what is wrong with Kauai. Well it appears to be too far back behind the front line to get protection. It also doesn't have tall peaks of it's own.



Philip Maise
Pahoa Hawaii

Originally Posted by Jellyologist

should? do some math.

I estimate the contents of a large supertanker would spread out nicely to cover an area of around 10 miles by 10 miles. That's an order of magnitude (or two) less than needed to solve the problem. Of course as shiva has mentioned it wouldn't work in practice anyway.

Originally Posted by pbmaise

The Atlantic Hurricanes are treated as if they are something special and can't be stopped. Yet Hawaii stops hurricanes so well that it wasn't until recently that people even realized that a storm was more unusual than others. If you go to the Wikipedia page for Hawaii Hurricanes you will see a very long list of hurricanes that died when they approached Hawaii.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hawaii_hurricanes

The only ones to hit and do wind damage of any significance hit Kauai.

What is going on in Hawaii is the mean height of the State of Hawaii is 3030 feet above sea level. The front line defending islands are much taller. Two of the three huge volcanoes standing guard are so tall that storms deposit snow on their summits. Every lb of snow that falls on hundreds of square miles of high plains of Hawaii removes 12,000 BTU from the storm Snow appears to be only one of two factors. The second factor is the volcanoes deflect wind from a hurricane and send it high up into the air where the jet stream grabs it and zips it away from the hurricane.

You can see this in a video on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_rxu0fJ2h8



Hawaii's system works so well that there hasn't been any measurable damage from high winds on any of the islands except Kauai. So what is wrong with Kauai. Well it appears to be too far back behind the front line to get protection. It also doesn't have tall peaks of it's own.



Philip Maise
Pahoa Hawaii

Please don't resurrect old threads like this. It confuses our users and makes me cross.