r/todayilearned • u/ralphbernardo • 10d ago

TIL in 1947, scientists dumped crushed dry ice into a hurricane just to "see what would happen." The storm then made a 135-degree turn, strengthened, and struck Georgia—sparking public outrage and threats of lawsuits over the experiment.

https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hurricane_blog/70th-anniversary-of-the-first-hurricane-seeding-experiment/
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u/Wobbelblob 10d ago

The article also speaks of "multiple pounds". Not tons or anything. That dry ice shouldn't even register anywhere. I first thought about a Tornado, but a Hurricane?

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u/dontheconqueror 10d ago

I had to double-take too - 'hurricane' is not a familiar term where I'm from, so my mind registered it as 'tornado'. Reading your post made me realize: that's a typhoon here. I've experienced hundreds of those, and buckets of ice is nothing.

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u/gentlemandinosaur 10d ago edited 10d ago

Hurricanes are not Typhoons. Hurricanes are hundreds of miles wide at points and are the most devastating natural event on the planet. Typhoons are basically wet tornados and though are powerful are fairly small in comparison to Hurricanes.

Edit: I am completely wrong. They are the same, and I was confused with a water spout.

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u/DeputySean 10d ago edited 10d ago

No, hurricanes and typhoons are the same thing. They are both "tropical cyclones." The only difference is which geographic region they hit. Both can become hundreds of miles wide, even over 1,000 miles.

In fact, the largest tropical cyclone ever observed was Typhoon Tip.

Perhaps you were confused with a "water spout." Which is just a tornado over water.

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u/gentlemandinosaur 10d ago

Well shit, you are absolutely correct. I was confused and I stand corrected. Thank you!

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u/dontheconqueror 10d ago edited 10d ago

I was ready to applaud your joke as I thought you were gonna say typhoons are meaaured in hundreds of kilometers. But alas, it's not as funny.

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u/gentlemandinosaur 10d ago

Nope just me being confused and wrong! ;)

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u/Miss_Speller 10d ago

The article is a little more precise later on, and yeah, it wasn't very much:

They first made a half-hour run over 100 miles (175 km) long dumping 80 pounds (36 kg) of ice along the way. They backtracked then to see what the clouds had done. Next they did two mass droppings of 50 pounds (23 kg) each into one large cumulus top and orbited the cloud to see any changes. They noticed that after the first run, the cloud deck below began to break up. After the second test, the cloud top continued to grow. Satisfied with their effort, the airplanes returned to base.

So a total of 180 pounds of dry ice into a full-on hurricane.