Could Giant Movie Fans Stop a Hurricane?

[tribdog]

You know those fans they use in movies to simulate wind? The really big powerful ones. How many of those would it take to counteract a hurricane? How many just to drop it down a category. I think you can get one to blow at hurricane force can't you? If cost wasn't a factor could enough of those fans be built and set up to stop a hurricane?

 

[Chi Meson]

Let's see what would do an inadequate job at saving Galveston.

The main part of the town is about 10 km long. Let's say the fans are 1m in diameter (I doubt it). So a huge rack of fans 10,000 at the base and say, what 100 m high? just to protect the buildings?

So, one million of these fans, on the order of 1000W each. A thousand megawatts of electricity to power them. And still, I doubt they'd stay up, and if they did, they would create a small pocket of extreme turbulence (as two masses of wind collide).

I say we call the Mythbusters!

 

[tribdog]

maybe we could at least make a hurricane veer off and hit mexico instead of us?

 

[Math Is Hard]

How about dropping giant ice cubes into it to cool the water down?

 

[LURCH]

That's what I always thought (well, actually stir the water so the cold water from the bottom comes to the top).

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

How do you think the hurricane got started in the first place?

 

[tribdog]

When you drain a sink and that little whirlpool forms I know from experience that it doesn't take much to totally destabilize it. Can a hurricane be broken up if just a portion of it is disturbed? Say an H-bomb dropped into the middle. Forget about the radiation and the danger. Would it stop a hurricane?

 

[tribdog]

How do you think the hurricane got started in the first place?

It was that F-ing butterfly in Australia.

 

[Andre]

How about dropping giant ice cubes into it to cool the water down?

That's a better idea, the high sea surface temperatures put a lot of energy in those storms.

How about tugging in a big chunk of (Ant)arctic sea ice into the gulf?

 

[Moonbear]

What about the wind getting sucked toward the fans from the other side?

I wouldn't want to be the one in charge of unplugging them after the storm surge hits either.

 

[wolram]

Do you not know? all one needs is some actors from a B movie and the problem will be solved in 90 minuted, 30 is they shoot the actor playing the government science specialist.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

Do you not know? all one needs is some actors from a B movie and the problem will be solved in 90 minuted, 30 is they shoot the actor playing the government science specialist.

Each of the seven scientists/inventors and their theories are profiled in turn, and “tested” against a hurricane using computer-generated animation and graphics. There is Ross Hoffman, of Atmospheric and Environmental Research, who believes that zapping the top of a hurricane with solar panels in space will cause it to change course. Russian Meteorologist Vladamir Pudov wants to weaken hurricanes with a surface film on the ocean that will minimize the evaporation that feeds the monsters. Phil Kithil, an inventor of remote-sensing devices, demonstrates his prototype oceangoing-pump designed to neutralize hurricanes by bringing cold water from the depths to the surface. Meteorologist William Gray, the world’s most famous hurricane expert, proposes burning petroleum on barges in the path of hurricanes to slow them down. 15-year-old Jason Stanton, Tulsa’s top science fair award-winner, devised a concept that would cool the ocean’s surface in the path of oncoming hurricanes by using liquid nitrogen. Joe Golden has flown dozens of hurricane seeding flights probing the effects of seeding hurricanes with silver iodide in the hope of spurring convection of hurricane eye-walls and diminishing their force. And Robert Dickerson, a senior weapons researcher with a strong track record in laser design, thinks it might be possible to alter the dynamics of hurricanes by providing ionized pathways for discharge of electrical charges on one side or the other of hurricanes using vertically launched ion exhaust rocketry or by high intensity laser pulses.

http://www.cogentbenger.com/HowToStopAHurricane.htm

its a tv special.

 

[Moonbear]

http://www.cogentbenger.com/HowToStopAHurricane.htm

its a tv special.

And here, I thought it would at least require Bruce Willis to work.

 

[edward]

It was that F-ing butterfly in Australia.